Blinding
by Beloved-Stranger
Summary: Something is happening to Dave Karofsky.  He knows things he shouldn't - couldn't - and feels like he should know more. He hears voices and knows a language he never learned...and then there's the hex bag he found in his locker... Spoiler/pairing inside
1. PART ONE

**Title: Blinding**

**Pairing(s):** Kurtofsky

**Rating:** PG-13

**Word Count:** (this chapter) 2,487

**Warnings:** Coarse language, gore, SUPERNATURAL THEMES AND BY THEMES I MEAN CROSSOVER LIKE WHOA.

**Spoilers:** Okay this takes place in Glee Season 2, post Born This Way. For SPN it's placed in the year-that-wasn't (i.e. earlier this year) between Season 5 and Season 6. So, Dean is at the Braedon place playing happy families and Sam is soulless and off playing not-so-happy families with Clan Campbell. And Jo is…not dead…

**Author's Note:** I don't know why this keeps happening to me at work. It's so bloody inconvenient. I also don't know why I keep writing new fics when my WIPs are glaring at me accusingly. D: It's a disease, I swear…

**Summary:**

_Something is happening to Dave. He's hearing voices. He knows things he shouldn't – couldn't – and feels like he should know more. Like he's forgotten something important, something crucial._

_And then there's the hex bag he found in his locker…_

* * *

><p><strong>PART ONE<strong>

**-Destiny-**

It happens without warning or reason.

Voices rip through him, bright and effervescent and thunderous. They fill his head and beat in his heart and roar in his ears.

Dave lets out a sound, something anguished and hoarse as goes to his knees in the middle of the field, clutching the sides of his head.

Behind him, he hears his name being called, and then Azimio's hands are on his shoulders, his face a blur of fear and concern. Dave can feel tears streaming down his face, crippling despair filling him like frigid water. He can't even speak, can't answer as Zee frantically asks what's wrong, _what's wrong?_

Then there's wetness against his palms, viscous heat – blood running from his ears – and the world tips sideways as he passes out.

**-Sonata-**

The doctors ask if this has happened before, about the events leading up to it, if he has a history of head injuries.

Dave shakes his head and gazes at them with bleak eyes. They leave him alone and go to speak to his parents.

The voices have sunk to a more manageable stream of whispers, and when he can bear to listen to them, he tries to pick one thread from the many, but they're not making any sense. They keep talking about demons and vessels and revelation and oh god, Dave _does not want to have schizophrenia_ – and this is how it starts, right? With voices in your head and…

And it doesn't explain the blood.

And it doesn't explain the feeling that something is…missing. Like he's forgotten something important.

Twenty minutes later he realizes that the voices aren't speaking English.

**-Say After Me-**

The new school nurse is called Ms Harvelle. She's young and blond and pretty, but she hardly seems to smile. When Noah Puckerman shows up saying he has a headache and looking for a place to nap she watches him flatly until he skulks back to math class.

Dave watches him go, handsome face hangdog, and sits quietly while Ms Harvelle reads the letter from his doctor. When she's finished, she looks up at him, and Dave wants to squirm. Her face is intent, brown eyes dark as wet earth.

"What happened, David?"

"It says in the letter –"

"This?" She holds it up. "This is a description of an episode you had and an outline of a care and prevention plan. It's a collection of medical jargon. Tell me what happened."

He doesn't know why he does it. He doesn't _know_.

But he tells her everything he didn't tell the doctors and his parents.

**-In My Place-**

Beiste holds him back after practice and asks him if he'll be okay to play. He tells her yes, tells her about the prevention part of the plan in Ms. Harvelle's office and then flees.

He skips the locker room and goes straight home, ignoring texts from Zee and Santana and Strado.

He just needs to get away.

He just needs to think.

The voices keep talking, and now they're whispering about monsters.

**-First Snow-**

His dreams are filled with shadows. Light against walls and doorways. Cold, gold edged rooms. Beautiful, distant faces he should know but can't place or make sense of (they have too many eyes). He wakes shaking and sometimes crying and once, shouted so loudly his parents burst into his room as his eyes opened, thinking he was having another 'episode'.

He shakes them off and won't talk about it.

It the morning he goes by Ms Harvelle's office and catches up on missed sleep. She doesn't ask questions, but somehow he ends up telling her anyway.

She listens, head tilted a little to one side, face full of thought. "And they're talking about monsters now?"

He nods. "I'm going crazy, aren't I?"

"Do you feel crazy?"

He looks up at her, heart in his mouth, because no – no, he doesn't. Sometimes he feels like he's waking up from something, even as he's falling apart.

Ms Harvelle smiles at his answer. "Then you're not crazy. Now, pack your shit and get to class."

**-Teardrop-**

Kurt, of all people, corners him after lunch one day.

"Are you okay?" He's got this apprehensive look on his face like he expects Dave to go off – like he's some kind of time bomb, which…some days it feels like that, but not today. Today is a restless day, like he's forgotten something urgent he should be doing. The voices are frenetic, like they know it too.

"I'm fine," he tells Kurt, and keeps pointlessly rustling about in his locker, trying to look busy – trying to keep busy – even though he's can't think what he's looking for.

Maybe Kurt picks up on it because he lets out this doubtful, "…uh-huh."

"I am," Dave says – and then frowns, his hand landing on some unfamiliar shape tucked behind his chemistry textbook. All he can feel is soft, dusty leather – and then he pulls his hand out and there's a small pouch in it, simple, tied with a shoelace like one from his football boots…

"David," Kurt says. "_David_."

He blinks up at Kurt. "Yeah?"

"What the hell is that?"

"I…" He looks back down at the pouch. "I don't know. I've never seen it before." He frowns again. There's a creeping feeling down his spine, voices rising to a kind of fever-pitch. "I think…I think someone put it in my locker."

It shouldn't be this frightening…but it is.

**-Scarlet-**

Kurt trails after him as Dave makes his way to Jo's office, asking why Dave would take the pouch to show the school nurse, and is irritated and concerned when Dave can't give him a better answer than, "she's nice."

"She's _nice_?" Kurt seems to be putting all the scorn he can into that one word.

"Christ, Kurt, I don't know, okay? She's always been nice to me and…" Dave kind of wants to curl in on himself, but he's trusted Kurt with secrets before and it hasn't backfired on him yet, so… "I can talk to her. I can't tell my parents or my friends, or even Ms Pillsbury, but I can tell Jo."

"She lets her call her by her first name?" Kurt sounds suspicious…and then he stares at Dave like he's just realizing something. "Wait, did you come out to her?"

"No." Dave can hear the hardness in his voice, but doesn't apologize. "I don't talk to anyone about…that. I talk to Jo about other stuff."

"Like?"

Dave doesn't answer. He quickens his pace, hoping Kurt will take a hint and storm off to class or something, but he just gives Dave a sidelong glare and powerwalks a little to keep pace with him. They're still quiet when they get to Jo's office and Dave knocks on the door. She waves them in when she sees Dave, not exactly smiling, but her mouth quirks up a little and she doesn't look displeased.

"Hi Dave," she murmurs, "What can I help you with?" When she sees his uncertain look, she frowns. "What is it?"

Dave takes the pouch out of his pocket and carefully puts it down on her blotter pad. "I…I found this in my locker. I think someone put it there."

Jo stares at it, her face pale and her jaw tight. "Fuck," she breathes.

Kurt makes a small sound of surprise beside Dave. Then Jo gets quickly to her feet, plucks a set of gloves from the box on the shelves behind her and starts giving orders.

"Dave, go wash your hands," she says, nodding to the sink by one of the beds. "Use the hand-wash with the blue lid and then glove up. Kurt, close the blinds and do the same."

Dave does as he's told, but sees Kurt hesitating, like its suddenly occurring to him that things are serious and he's not sure he wants to be here. Maybe Jo sees it too, because she looks up at him, dark eyes narrowed.

"Or you can go to class. It's okay if you want to."

Maybe Kurt saw a challenge where there was wasn't one, but the smaller boy squares his shoulders and goes to drop the blinds.

**-In the House of Flies-**

The hand-wash smells like mixed herbs – Dave can pick out rosemary and cloves and something peppery. It leaves his palms and fingertips tingling, like the time he got shocked by his uncle's power drill.

He gloves up with Kurt. They're a little tight for him, and he worries that his nails might pop through the latex.

"Ms Harvelle," Kurt says, "what is this thing? Why do we have to wear gloves?"

Jo gives them both a piercing look, like she's sizing them up. "It's a hex bag, and I don't know what's been put into it, so. Better safe than sorry."

"A hex bag?" Dave asks.

Jo nods. "Witches use them."

The world flips one-eighty.

"Witches?" he hears Kurt say, full of disbelief and scorn. "Are you serious?" He doesn't wait for an answer. "Is she serious?" he demands of Dave.

"Very," Jo murmurs. She cuts through the shoelace holding the leather closed and it falls into a square, contents gathered at its centre.

Blood.

Bright, cherry-red and wet.

Everything is soaked in it. Dave can make out a fistful of crushed feathers and something that might be a coin, and a piece of knotted fabric. There are other things, things barely identifiable under the blood…

"Are…" Kurt sounds a little broken. "Are those…teeth?"

Jo has taken a set of tweezers and is carefully disentangling the…things…from each other, setting them out in a row on a steel tray. She uses a spray bottle of water to gently wash the blood away, and yes, _yes_, those are definitely teeth. Very small teeth. Milk teeth.

Dave wants to be sick.

Kurt flails for the sink and _is_ sick.

"What the hell is going on?" he gasps.

Jo looks angry, and worried. "Someone," she says, voice low, "does not like you, Dave."

"What?" His heart is galloping in his chest. The voices are distant, a torrent of faraway whispers. "Why?"

"Hex bags are used for several things, but an arrangement like this?" She gestures to the morbid line of artefacts. "Someone putting this in a place belonging to you could only be wishing you harm. Or worse."

"Worse?" Kurt croaks.

Jo sighs and holds up the coin. It's strung on a chain and swings gently to and fro. Her eyes are dark as the spaces between stars.

"This isn't just a coin," she says, "this was made before they had coins in common currency."

"What is it then?" Dave asks.

"It's a medallion," she tells them, "of King David."

In his head, one voice rises above the rest to a roar.

**-The Way to Breathe-**

Dave skips the rest of the day and spends it hidden under a crown oak in a park near his house. His mom used to take him here when he was little. He used to climb this tree and pretend to be Peter Pan. Now he leans against the trunk and tries not to think.

He's so busy not-thinking it takes him a few minutes to realize his phone is practically exploding with enraged texts from Kurt, much of them in caps and with a common theme of EVERYONE IS GOING INSANE INCLUDING YOU DAVE KAROFSKY HOW COULD YOU DITCH ME IN THIS PIT OF MADNESS GET BACK HERE AND EXPLAIN WHY PEOPLE ARE LEAVING BLOODY TEETH IN YOUR FCUKING LOCKER.

Dave doesn't know why people would leave teeth is his fcuking, uh…fucking locker any more than Kurt does, so he texts back, **ask Jo**, and goes back to not thinking.

Seconds later his phone goes off again: **Where the hell are you and what the hell are you doing?**

Because there doesn't seem to be any point in being anything other than completely honest with Kurt – it's like instead of functioning gaydar they gave him creepy Dave-centric mind-reading abilities or something – Dave replies with, **trying not to think about it.**

After a few minutes – **where are you?**

Dave sighs, gives up, and texts Kurt his location. Sure enough… **Stay put.**

He hears Kurt's Navigator pull up and the sound of his boots as he makes his way over to Dave's tree. Then a perfectly coiffed head pokes around the trunk. "Are you okay?"

This time Dave is honest.

"No."

"Okay." Kurt nods, looking at his boots for a moment before settling himself next to Dave against the tree trunk. "So tell me why."

**-White Rabbit-**

The next day Dave finds Jo sitting behind her desk with a split lip and a bruise purpling her jaw. He can see another one on her left forearm and when she gets up its evident she's trying not to bear too much weight on her right leg.

She waves off his concern and hands him a pendant on a leather cord. "Put this on and don't ever, _ever_ take it off, okay?"

He warily takes it, inspecting the pendant, which resembles a pentagram surrounded by the rays of a sun. "What is it?"

"Anti-possession charm."

This doesn't alarm him as much as it should. The voices talk about demons often enough… "Do you have another one?"

She raises an eyebrow. "I have several."

Dave takes another three, and when he gets home he'll secret one in each of this parent's wallets.

He gives Kurt his as he walks him to French. And for once, Kurt doesn't ask questions.

**-Jaded-**

Each morning Jo seems to have a new collection of bruises, and Dave's on the verge of asked what the hell is going on when what's going on arrives at school after practice one Thursday and gets in his face.

It's Hank Saunders – but it's _not Hank Saunders_. He can see the kid's face, but over it and…and under it is a face made out of oil and blackness and seething maggots and unclean awful things Dave's completely inadequate human brain cannot begin to process.

But he knows what this is.

He shouldn't, but he knows this is a _demon_.

Hank – or the thing wearing him – comes at him, and before he can react he's hurled back against his own truck, head bouncing off the door and stars bursting behind his eyes.

Vaguely, he hears his name being called, thinks it might be Jo, but his head hurts and then…

And then…

And then the thing is laughing in his face, talking about how his boss is just going to love this, a little angel radio all to themselves and Dave KNOWS WORDS.

He manages to get a grip on the thing's wrist and then those WORDS, that alien LANGUAGE, is pouring out of him in a fount of low, air-rending, earth-shaking vowels and hard, rock-solid consonants.

The demon wearing Hank Saunders screams, and then seconds later tears itself from his body, boiling away into the air in a torrent of thick black smoke.

Hank collapse against Dave, insensate and too heavy; Dave's knees go out from under him and they both hit the pavement. There are familiar footsteps and then Jo is there, helping Dave lever Hank up and put him in the recovery position.

"What the hell?" Dave gasps, still illogically winded and fighting the spangles of panic in his chest. His heart pounds away, threatening to break a rib. "What…that wasn't English. That was…"

"That wasn't even Latin," Jo says. "That, from what I've heard, was Enochian."

Dave stares at her. "What does that mean?"

She tilts her head, bird-bright and almost suspicious. "It means you're not just high school junior, David Karofsky."

**-Shake It Out-**

The next day Jo calls him out of class and when he gets to her office she takes him to the parking lot and hustles him into her white pickup.

They drive for half an hour, the outskirts of town where the grass has found its way between the slabs of the sidewalk and the eyes of those on the streets are suspicious and hard.

The house they stop at has a sagging porch and steps missing boards and the woman who meets them at the door is rail thin and uglier for it. Her eyes are dishwater blue and carve holes in all they find. Dave wants to pull away from her or hide, but Jo drags him inside and puts him in what looks like a salvaged dentist's chair.

"Shirt off," the woman says, her voice a rasp, and Dave cannot bring himself to protest.

Then she gets out the tattoo kit and puts a symbol on his chest, over his heart. It's a replica of his anti-possession pendant.

"Just in case," Jo says, and there's an apology in her voice.

Dave nods. "Are we done?"

"No," the woman says, and when Dave stares at her she cracks a nicotine-yellow smile and continues, "There're more things we need to hide you from than demons, my boy."

* * *

><p><strong>AN2:<strong> Hokay, playlist time!

Destiny – Bear McCreary  
>Sonata (Battlestar Sonotica) – Bear McCreary<br>Say After Me – Bic Runga  
>In My Place – Coldplay<br>First Snow – Clint Mansell  
>Teardrop – Massive Attack<br>Scarlet – Brooke Fraser  
>In the House of Flies – Deftones<br>The Way to Breathe – Fur Patrol  
>White Rabbit – Emiliana Torrini (Sucker Punch version)<br>Jaded – Blindspott  
>Shake It Out – Florence + The Machine<p> 


	2. PART TWO

**Title: Blinding**

**Author:** 100YearGirl

**Pairing(s):** Kurtofsky

**Rating:** PG-13

**Word Count:** (this chapter) 2,110

**Warnings:** Coarse language, gore, SUPERNATURAL THEMES AND BY THEMES I MEAN CROSSOVER LIKE WHOA.

**Spoilers:** Okay this takes place in Glee Season 2, post Born This Way. For SPN it's placed in the year-that-wasn't (i.e. earlier this year) between Season 5 and Season 6. So, Dean is at the Braedon place playing happy families and Sam is soulless and off playing not-so-happy families with Clan Campbell. And Jo is…not dead…

**Author's Note:** Okay, so y'know how I said I was just going to update on KLove? Eh. Figure I might as well update here as well. If you want the music its available in the LJ update.

**Summary:**

_Something is happening to Dave. He's hearing voices. He knows things he shouldn't – couldn't – and feels like he should know more. Like he's forgotten something important, something crucial._

_And then there's the hex bag he found in his locker…_

**PART TWO**

**-The Reasons-**

Dave stays home from school for two days after and claims to be sick.

It's not hard; the tattoos have set him spinning and wheeling, and the voices are white-edged and distressed. They beat against his skull like trapped birds and for the first time in weeks he fights to blot them out.

On day two, Kurt shows up at lunchtime, white faced and pinched.

"Jo said you'd need help today," he says, very softly, and Dave is so thankful because his head feels like it's going to burst. He's oversensitive and overawed, bright lights stabbing his eyes and loud noises, voices, feel like hammer blows.

Kurt helps him into the bathroom and out of his shirt…and sucks in a sharp breath when he sees the tats. They're scabbing at a phenomenal rate, like they _want_ to heal fast, and a protective crust of ink and blood has formed over the wounds. The skin of his torso pulls and pinches when he moves to fast or too far.

"God," Kurt breathes.

Dave lets out a low, bitter laugh. "Yeah, he's in there somewhere."

"Dave, what is all this?"

"Protection. From a lot of things." He closes his eyes and takes brief moment to push back against the bludgeoning calls in his head. It pounds. "They…"

"They what?" Kurt is close enough that Dave can feel the warmth his skin puts out. Can smell him. Dave breathes deep and his head gets a little quieter, a little lighter.

"They said it's only like this because of…of what I am."

"…a Capricorn?"

Dave gives another low laugh, but this one doesn't taste so sour in his mouth. "No…no. I – there's something wrong with me, Kurt. I know things I shouldn't, I feel like I should know more and – and there's the voices."

He looks up and Kurt is looking steadily back at him; eyes brilliant in the dimly lit bathroom. They're some colour they don't have a name for yet – something like 'electric marine,' maybe. Like someone's lit a candle inside him.

"Still?"

"Yeah." He shakes his head. "I don't think they're going anywhere, Kurt."

Kurt nods, keeping his own counsel. "C'mon. We've got work to do."

**-Mantra-**

While Dave sits on the edge of the bath, Kurt lines up antiseptic cream, towels, soft cloths and a bowl of warm saline solution on the vanity. Dave holds very still while Kurt dabs the crusted blood with solution to soften it and wipe it away, revealing the inked designs beneath.

There's the one over his heart – the anti-possession symbol – and another that runs the length of his spine, flowing down over his vertebrae and touching what Jo called _chakras_; whorls of energy in his soul, now covered over with Sanskrit. Dave can feel Kurt's hands, warm on his back, and the gust of his breath on the damp skin after the cloth has passed over it. He feels a little steadier, centred almost.

"How's it look?" he murmurs, eyes closed.

"It's beautiful," Kurt murmurs back. Dave can hear the almost-smile in his voice. "I've never seen anything like it."

"I still haven't."

"You haven't seen them?" Kurt sounds shocked.

"They bandaged them after they were done, and when I took the bandages off there was all that dried blood…"

Kurt makes a sound – small, indignant – then mutters 'hang on' and ducks back into Dave's bedroom where he's left his bag. Seconds later he's back with his iPhone and taking quick captures of Dave's back. "Here," he says, handing Dave the phone.

The image briefly takes his breath away: the symbols and flowing Indo-Aryan script shades from the palest of greys, knotting over the bone that supports his skull just under his hair, and becomes light-eating black by the time it comes level with his clavicles. It knots again between his shoulder blades, mid-back, the small of his back and then dovetails embarrassingly low over the tops of his buttocks.

Kurt's right though – it's a work of fucking art.

"Do you know what it says?" Kurt asks, starting work on the teardrop-shaped cap of Maori spirals covering his right shoulder.

"Yeah," Dave says, swallowing thickly. "It's Sanskrit hymn. _O earth, atmosphere, heaven: May we attain that excellent glory of Savitr the God, so he may stimulate our prayers._ The knots name the chakras they cover and protect them."

"It's a good thing they told you what it meant," Kurt says. "It'd be weird having a tattoo and not knowing what it said."

"Yeah," says Dave, and doesn't tell Kurt that they didn't tell him anything beyond the basics and that this is the first time he's laid eyes on Sanskrit, but can read it as well as English.

**-Never Let Me Go-**

Kurt insists on seeing to all the tats himself, and so after the one on his back is clean and smothered in antiseptic moisturizer, he settles himself beside Dave and tends to the set of wide cuffs over the meat of his forearms. Something about the ink of them means they flare pale the light, only darkening into visibility under shadow.

_They only show themselves when needed_, the tattooist told him, looking at the Celtic coils and switchbacks with fond eyes, as though speaking of two mischievous children…which only served to unnerve Dave further.

When Dave gets a good look at them he can just make out the animals caught in the design; wolves, or dogs maybe, an owl on his left and an eagle on his right and a matched set of horses with teeth like a shark's. It makes sense; Jo said they would shield him from shapeshifters – keeping them from walking around with his face – and prevent a werewolf or a skinwalker from catching his scent to make a meal of his heart.

_Shapeshifters' eyes flare like that_, she said as the ink flickered under his skin. _It's one of the only ways to tell what they are._

Dave flexes one forearm, and the inked eyes of the animals wink back. Kurt pauses where he's dabbing solution on the opposite arm and Dave looks up at him.

"You okay?"

"Hmm?" Kurt meets his eyes then looks away, almost guiltily. "I'm fine."

"Yeah, okay, it's just you hesitated, so…"

"Yeah, no, I'm…I'm fine."

Dave nods. Kurt finishes with his arms and starts in on the anti-possession tat over his heart. Its awkward on the edge of the bath, so Dave ends up slumped on the toilet lid with his head resting back against the top of the cistern. Kurt drags a footstool in from his dad's office and kneels on it to work. They're close, and Dave finds himself closing his eyes to keep from meeting Kurt's by accident, and shallowing his breathing in case Kurt picks up on him trying to catch his scent again.

And to keep from freaking himself out. There's something…animal about the action, and with all that's happened, the last thing Dave needs is something else to remind him that he's different now.

He can't keep from wincing when the crust pulls away from his skin and tries to take some of his chest hair with it. Kurt sees and blushes, muttering an apology and gentling his ministrations further – all delicate touches and slow smoothing motions and Dave is just _dying_ here, really, he is.

Sweet relief comes when they get to the last tat, set high on the right side of his ribcage, just below his right pec. Once they get through this one Dave can find some polite way of kicking Kurt out and then crawl back into bed and curse the parts of him that are enjoying Kurt putting his pretty hands all over Dave's chest.

"Ohhhh my god," Kurt breathes and Dave raises his head.

"What?"

"You…holy crap, you have to see this," Kurt says, grabbing his hand and tugging ineffectually until Dave lumbers to his feet and lets himself be towed to the bathroom mirror…

Holy _crap_.

"Did you know it did that?" Kurt whispers, still staring.

"Uh-uh," Dave says, doing the same.

The final tattoo is a startlingly life-like rendering of San Marco's winged lion – life-like, as in its currently using Dave's ribs like a staircase and glaring at them with emerald eyes. It prowls back and forward, mantling its red and brown wings…and when it rumbles, there's no sound, but Dave can feel the air in the lung behind the beast vibrating.

Dave lets out a startled laugh and without thinking reaches out and takes Kurt's hand – "Here, check this out!" – placing it over the startled tat.

"He's _growling_," Kurt gasps, "I can _feel_ that!"

"I know right? What the hell…"

And he trails off, because when he looks up, Kurt does too. His eyes are still strangely bright, or maybe it's Dave's oversensitivity…but that doesn't make sense, because it's been decreasing since Kurt got here…and those eyes of his have caught him, keeping hold of him, so bright, like a summer sky or cut jewels or an aurora dancing over a frozen wasteland.

He almost doesn't register that he's moving, or that Kurt is. He feels his own hand cup the base of Kurt's neck, feels Kurt's hand curl over his shoulder while the other is still spanned against the now purring lion tattoo. But it's all secondary to Kurt's gaze, magnetic and electric and drowning him like a dragonfly in blue amber.

"Tell me to stop," Dave breathes with the last of his sanity. "Kurt, tell me no."

When both of them look back on it, neither will be able to say who moved first, only that Kurt nodded – the tiniest of movements – and then their mouths were sealing over each other.

It's the opening strike of lightening in a storm.

**-Lovesong-**

It a tempest; Dave can feel Kurt's fingers tightening on his shoulder, fingers cutting tiny crescents into his left shoulder, mouth pressing to his, tongue against the seam of his lips, teeth scraping over the lower hard enough to sting and _flashes going off behind Dave's eyes like blowing lightbulbs_.

Skin on skin is a shower of sparks. Hot breath is a torrent of fire. Dave unthinkingly backs Kurt up against the vanity and the soft sound he makes as all space between them vanishes is some kind of music. There's no pain now. No nausea or dizziness and the voices are hushed with awe.

He's balanced. _Whole_. Strong…

So it makes sense to take his hands from Kurt's hip and neck and grip the backs of his thighs; it feels right to lift him up and sit him on the vanity. Kurt gasps against his mouth, arms squeezing tight around his shoulders and letting out another symphony of sighs when Dave's hands shift again and find their way under his hopelessly wrinkled shirt. Dave smooth's them over acres of pale skin and it's like the lights in the room flicker, _shiver_, the sensation is so intense. He's sure this isn't right – this doesn't happen to other people – it shouldn't feel this good –

But Kurt's biting at his lower lip again, scraping his nails of the first chakra at the base of his skull, and Dave stops caring and starts leaving a white hot trail of toothsome kisses from Kurt's mouth to his jaw and then to the snowy column of his throat. Kurt gasps again and bows forward against him – "David…" – and you couldn't get a hair between them from thigh to collarbone. He finds one spot on Kurt's neck that when bitten makes the other boy seize up, thigh's gripping Dave's hips like he's afraid he'll fall otherwise, and then melt languidly against Dave until some other touch stirs him to life again and the kissing goes back to being frantic.

Frantic…

Stars a still blasting across his eyes when Kurt gasp out, "wait," between kisses. "Wait, wait, wait, Dave…"

"What…?" It's like coming out of a dream.

"I…" _am still kissing you_. "…I have…I have a boyfriend…I can't…"

The words bring them both up short (but not enough to pull them apart) and Kurt puts his forehead to Dave's. They stay like that, catching their breath and slowly, slowly, sanity filters back. Memory catches up with them…and yet they still don't part. Dave is still standing in the V between Kurt's legs with his arms taking the smaller boy's weight and Kurt still lets him, his own arms wrapped loosely over Dave's shoulders with one folded back so he can stroke the backs of his fingers over Dave's cheek.

"We can't," he breathes, and there's a catch in his voice that wreaks them both. "We…we can't…"


	3. PART THREE

**Title: Blinding**

**Author:** 100YearGirl

**Pairing(s):** Kurtofsky

**Rating:** PG-13

**Word Count:** (this chapter) 2, 321

**Warnings:** Coarse language, gore, SUPERNATURAL THEMES AND BY THEMES I MEAN CROSSOVER LIKE WHOA.

**Spoilers:** Okay this takes place in Glee Season 2, post Born This Way. For SPN it's placed in the year-that-wasn't (i.e. earlier this year) between Season 5 and Season 6. So, Dean is at the Braedon place playing happy families and Sam is soulless and off playing not-so-happy families with Clan Campbell. And Jo is…not dead…

**Author's Note:** Apparently total isolation on the Coromandel Coast agrees with me something fierce – I knocked this out the first day there.

**Summary:**

_Something is happening to Dave. He's hearing voices. He knows things he shouldn't – couldn't – and feels like he should know more. Like he's forgotten something important, something crucial._

_And then there's the hex bag he found in his locker…_

**PART THREE**

**-When the Levee Breaks-**

Dave finds him at the back of one of the art rooms.

Hank looks up at him with broken eyes and a shuttered face. Neither of them speaks as Dave carefully lowers himself to sit next to Hank against the back wall under the windows.

"You remember much?" Dave murmurs looking straight ahead.

Hank is looking down at his feet. He shakes his head. "Only flashes. When I'm awake. It's…" He swallows. "It's worse when I'm asleep."

Dave nods. He reaches into his hoodie pocket with his left hand and takes Hank's wrist with his right. Hank watches him, curious but wary, and Dave deposits the anti-possession charm in his open palm.

"…what is this?" Hank asks, examining it.

"It'll keep it from happening again," Dave says. "The design is to protect against possession."

Hank looks up at him. "You have one too?"

Dave wordlessly pulls down the collar of the hoodie to show the beginnings of the anti-possession tat.

"Where'd you get that?" Hank breathes.

"Ms Harvelle."

"The school nurse?"

"Yeah. She knows about this stuff, and knows someone who does…special tattoos. What is it?" he adds, catching the openly desperate look on Hank's face.

"Think she'll take me to get one too?"

**-Elegy-**

Kurt is avoiding him.

He's sure that's what's happening.

All of a damn sudden they're not walking to class together anymore, or texting about random shit, or sitting in Dave's park while they do homework and try not to talk about anything remotely supernatural.

Kurt won't even look at him in the halls. He just goes pink and starts powerwalking or pretends to be in very fucking earnest conversation with whichever of his Glee friends is with him.

Only…

Only sometimes there are little glances – quick, darted looks at Dave's face. He gets a heart-breaking glimpse of electric marine eyes before they shutter and disappear around a corner.

It's making Dave crazy, because despite the fact that neither of them is in possession of a vagina, even he knows this is a big fucking deal and they have to talk about it. Which they can't do if all of sudden Kurt won't give him the time of day.

Things finally come to a head two days before Prom.

Dave manages to corner Kurt in the library near the reference section. He knows no one will overhear them because no one – _no one_ – ever uses the reference books. The school hasn't updated them since 1953.

"Are you seriously doing this?" he asks, coming up behind Kurt who's absorbed in a tomb on 1950's fashion. Something about paisley (whatever the hell that is).

Kurt wheels around and stares at him, eyes comically wide. "David, I – I was just – I can't stay, I have to get to –"

"You don't have to get to anything. You have a free period now."

Kurt blinks at him, gaping like a landed fish. "How…"

"Remember the part where I've been walking you to class for the past month and a half?"

Kurt flushes, dark roses blooming in his cheeks. "I just can't talk right now," he mutters.

"Yes you can," Dave hisses back, "you just don't want to because that means you have to acknowledge that something actually happened. And you don't want to think about it being real because every time you do, you can't look your perfect little boyfriend in the face without feeling like sh-"

"Alright!" Kurt whisper-shouts. "Alright, fine, we need to talk about it! What the hell do you want me to say?"

"I don't –"

"What? What, you want me to say that something happened between us? You want me to say that it was amazing and I've never felt anything like that and I'm scared because I keep trying to find the same thing with Blaine and _I can't_ and it's starting to freak him out too because I'm being such a crazy person and every time I look at you it's like having a flashback and its really inconvenient being that turned on in the middle of the –"

And then he goes red again and puts his hand over his mouth like he's trying to stem the flow of crazy. They stare at each other for a fraught moment, trying to process.

"Okay, so, good talk," Kurt says and tries to duck around Dave, only Dave's too quick and catches Kurt's arm, swinging him round.

"Hey," he says, seeing Kurt's wild eyes. "Hey, calm down, okay." He keeps his voice low and tries to put as much warmth into it as he can. It doesn't seem to be working though, because Kurt folds in close to him and looks like he's about to cry. "Look, nothing _else_ has to happen, but you and I both know what ever the hell it was that _did_ happen…that kind of feeling, or reaction, or whatever… It shouldn't have been that intense."

Kurt hiccups out a small sob and puts his face against Dave's chest. Dave puts his arms around him, shelters him as best he can.

"I know," Kurt gasps out through soft, desperate sobs. "I know, but it wasn't just physical sensation…it was feelings too. I was half of something and didn't know it, and then…then _that_ happened and for a little while I was…I was…"

"Whole."

Kurt shivers against him. The voices cry out in anguish.

**-Push The Envelope-**

Prom is an unmitigated disaster.

Apparently the whole Bully Whips thing has been a boon to him, but not Santana.

Dave wins Prom King.

Kurt wins Prom Queen.

Oh, and just as Figgins is announcing their dance together, the voices choose this totally opportune moment to rise up and roar as one, loud enough to drown out all other sound, and every light in the school gymnasium explodes in a shower of glass and sparks.

As they're plunged into darkness, Kurt's hand tightens on his and Dave pulls him close, trying to batter the voices back and listen for a threat, trying to figure out where they might come from so he can face them and put Kurt safely at his back.

Then there's another flash of light – white and sourceless – and the pattern of broad wings spread as two arching shadows over the gym's ceiling. Then there's a guy in a trench-coat standing there, not four feet away from Dave (who instantly hauls Kurt behind him), staring at them with creepily intent blue eyes. The light keeps flashing, like contained lightening, briefly illuminating the panicked crowd of teenagers, and those _freakin' wings_ keep showing up in relief against the ceiling as the guy strides towards Dave.

"We have work for you, David Karofsky," he says, voice a rasp. "Very important work…"

Then he presses two fingers to Dave's forehead and the last thing Dave sees as his back hits the floor is Kurt's face, mouth desperately shaping his name.

**-Sonata Redux-**

He dreams.

He dreams and as usual it makes no sense. There are places and faces he knows without really _knowing_, people and creatures and gods and monsters that know his name and sing his praises. There are beings of light and heat who call him _brother_, who love and lift him up…but there's one who burns like a cold flame and reaches for him, filled with ugly malice.

Pain. Pain remembered and felt full-bore. He feels his spine bow upwards and someone calls his name, urgent and terrified. He breaks apart and falls.

When he comes 'round he's on his back in a hospital bed. There's an oxygen line under his nose and his wrists are bandaged to the bedrails. He can feel a strap across his chest under the blanket. When he can peel his eyes open he sees Jo is beside him.

She looks like she hasn't slept in days.

"Hey," he croaks.

She looks up at him, and he sees her dark eyes are shining with unshed tears and red from fallen ones. She's slumped back in her chair with her hand to her mouth. It scares Dave, because she's always been so strong…but now she looks like she might be breaking.

"Hey," she breathes back through her fingers. "They had to strap you down; you were seizing. Dave…Dave, I'm so sorry."

He swallows, throat dry, and she offers him sips from a cup of water on his bedside cabinet. "What for?" he manages.

"I was supposed to protect you," she says. "They brought me back to protect you, but I knew I'd end up having to protect you from them too."

"Who?" he says, confused.

She meets his eyes, and there's unfamiliar fear and awe and rage there, burning like twin candles.

"The angels," she whispers.

**-Tomorrow Never Knows-**

Jo woke up in a field, just outside of the town where she grew up and within spitting distance of the burnt out bar her family had run since her grandfather was a child.

She remembered dying a year ago in Carthage, Missouri, bleeding out in a hardware store while her mother hit the trigger that blew them and the hellhounds hunting them into tiny pieces.

She remembered her heaven, and her mother's heaven, and her father's, and Ash showing her the heavens of so many others.

She remembered everything that was taken from her, and it made her so, _so_ angry.

When she got to her feet, Castiel was there, waiting.

"He told me he had a job for me. Something only I could do." She swallows, looking sad and ill and tired. "He said there was something precious in Lima, Ohio, and that it was up to me protect it." She looks up at him. "He never told me what it was. He just gave me a bag and a set of keys and told me to go, but stay hidden. He said I would know it when I found it…and then I found you, and I knew."

Dave closes his eyes. The voices are hushed and as sad as Jo. Their sorrow is hard to bear.

"Jo," he whispers, "what am I?"

She slips her hand into his, but it's the angel who speaks.

There's the beat of disembodied wings and Castiel is there in the room's doorway, moving silently towards them.

"You're an angel, David," he says, blue eyes boring holes in all they land on. "A fallen angel who's remembering who he really is. All we have to do is locate your grace, and you can be whole again."

Dave can't speak. He swallows hard and searches for his voice. When he finds it, it's hardly there at all. "Why would you want to help me if I fell? Doesn't that...doesn't that mean I did something wrong?"

Castiel's head tilts to the side, like a bird of prey regarding a non-standard rabbit. "It is not clear. The circumstances of your departure from heaven are not…conclusive." His face hardens. "At this stage it does not matter. I am in the middle of a civil war. All must fight for our freedom, whether their discharge from our ranks was honourable or not."

"Cas," Jo says, voice low, beseeching, "he's not even eighteen…"

Castiel's expression does not change. "Do your job, Joanna."

He sends Dave one last piercing look and vanishes.

**-When the Levee Breaks-**

Kurt finds him on the ice. He leans against the dividing wall and watches Dave fire puck after puck into the net.

"I'd almost forgotten you used to play hockey," he murmurs, but in the thin, cool air his voice carries.

Dave looks up at him briefly and slams yet another puck. _Crack._ "I should've kept playing."

"Why?"

"There's no future for me in football." _Crack._ "There aren't enough scholarships to go around," _crack_, "and I'm not that good." _Crack._ "…not that it fucking matters now."

Kurt looks down at his hands. Dave can see how pink his knuckles are, can see the cold-bitten roses across the tops of his cheeks. He sighs and makes his way over to him.

"Figures you'd come in here without gloves," Dave mutters, pulling off his own and taking Kurt's left hand to start putting them on him. "At least you remembered your coat."

Kurt flushes, pink deepening to red, but he doesn't stop Dave, or tell him off when he keeps hold of Kurt's hands, sandwiching them between his own, ostensibly to help them warm up faster.

"Jo told me what happened," Kurt tells him, voice soft. "She told me what you are."

Dave just looks steadily back at him, waiting.

"It…it kind of makes me wonder though, I mean, if there's angels," Kurt continues, voice thin, "does that mean there's a God? Does that mean all the crap they say in the Bible is – is right and I'm…"

Dave grips his hands tightly and leans over the dividing wall to put his face close to Kurt's.

"No," he says firmly. "There's probably a God, but I get the feeling he's not doing much at the moment." He touches their foreheads together and rests a hand on the back of Kurt's neck, rubbing his thumb through the short hair at the base of his skull. Kurt closes his eyes and shakily sighs out. "And there's nothing wrong with you, or me. Do you think they'd be co-opting me into a celestial army if there was?"

Kurt slowly shakes his head, eyes still closed. "No…"

"Exactly."

"I hate this, though. I hate that they're going to take you away when they find your grace or whatever it is, and that we can't do anything to stop it. I hate that this is happening now, and I hate that…I hate that we only just figured out that we…" He trails off, voice cracking.

Dave really can't help himself. He presses a quick kiss to the corner of Kurt's mouth.

"We'll figure something out," he says with confidence he doesn't feel. "We will…"


	4. PART FOUR

**Title: Blinding**

**Author:** 100YearGirl

**Pairing(s):** Kurtofsky

**Rating:** PG-13

**Word Count:** (this chapter) 2, 185

**Warnings:** Coarse language, gore, SUPERNATURAL THEMES AND BY THEMES I MEAN CROSSOVER LIKE WHOA.

**Spoilers:** Okay this takes place in Glee Season 2, post Born This Way. For SPN it's placed in the year-that-wasn't (i.e. earlier this year) between Season 5 and Season 6. So, Dean is at the Braedon place playing happy families and Sam is soulless and off playing not-so-happy families with Clan Campbell. And Jo is…not dead…

**Author's Note:** Free hugs for all commenters! Whoop whoop! 3

**Summary:**

_Something is happening to Dave. He's hearing voices. He knows things he shouldn't – couldn't – and feels like he should know more. Like he's forgotten something important, something crucial._

_And then there's the hex bag he found in his locker…_

**PART FOUR**

**-Inner City Blues-**

If Dave thought it was hard seeing Kurt with Blaine at Prom, this is a million times harder.

They're on a date in Breadstix, and Dave is here to pick up takeout for himself and his oblivious parents. They're holding hands on the table, gazing at each other…only Kurt looks like he's having a little trouble.

Dave looks away and pays for his order. He gets out into the parking lot before Kurt spots him; electric marine eyes catching on his through the glass front doors of the restaurant. Dave doesn't know what shows on his face (_hurt, fear, anger_), but the guilt on Kurt's is a sucker-punch to his gut.

He sees Blaine turning to follow Kurt's gaze and yanks his truck's door open, turning away and pretending he hasn't seen them.

He wonders what Kurt will tell Blaine.

**-Close Your Eyes-**

When he next sees Kurt – in Jo's office, talking to her and her friend Adam about archangels and how the last one alive/at large is gunning to restart the Apocalypse – Dave won't look at him.

Jo looks between them like they're a pair of recalcitrant puzzle pieces that refuse to mesh the way she wants. Adam just raises his eyebrows and appears to be suppressing a smile.

"I didn't know – I'll just…" Kurt stammers, gesturing like he's going to back out of the room.

Dave stares at his hands.

"You're Dave's friend, right? Kurt?" Adam asks.

"Um." He knows Kurt is looking at him. He can feel his eyes on the side of his neck and shoulder.

"You should hear this," Adam continues regardless. "You'll need to be prepared as well."

"…prepared for what?" Kurt asks, and the tremor in his voice makes Dave want to go to him, but he clenches his fists and doesn't move. He hears Kurt come into the room and shut the door behind him.

"Depending on how powerful Dave is," Jo explains, "Raphael may try and keep him from regaining his grace and joining Castiel. He may try and get to Dave by hurting someone close to him."

Kurt sits down abruptly.

"It doesn't matter," Dave says, getting up and going for the door. "We're not that close."

He hears Kurt's breath hitch as the door swings shut behind him.

**-Yours Truly-**

Kurt catches him at his truck. "David."

"Busy," Dave snaps back and hefts his gear-bag over his shoulder, heading for the locker rooms.

"Liar," Kurt spits back, striding acrosst the student parking lot after him.

"Look just _leave it_, alright?" Dave shoves the door open and heads for his locker. Kurt follows, far from dissuaded.

"No," Kurt barks, and Dave can tell from his tone that he's really freaking pissed. "You can't just walk away like that – you can't just say something like that and expect me not to –"

"I expect you to get lost," Dave snaps back, slamming his locker open.

"Oh _really_?" Kurt's sarcasm is sharp enough to cut steel with.

"Yes! I expect you cut your fucking loses, Kurt, and do the smart thing!"

"Which is?"

"Stay away from me!"

They're really getting in each other's faces at this point. If Dave still cared in any meaningful way about being outed he'd be worried about the volumes they're reaching. This close up, Kurt's eyes are blue lamps of rage.

"Why?" he demands. "Why the hell would you want me to do that?"

"It's not what I _want_, you little idiot, it's what's best for you!" Dave shouts back.

"What the _hell_ are you even talking about?"

Dave throws his hands up. "I'm trying to keep you –"

Kurt's mouth crashes into his. There's a rather involved pause where Kurt bites Dave's lip and Dave grips Kurt's hips hard enough to bruise. When they break apart to catch their breath Dave manages to mutter, "I'm trying to keep you safe."

"I know. I'm sorry."

"Me too. But that's not a fair way to win an argument, you dick."

Kurt laughs a little and kisses him again. "Sorry." He sighs and backs up a bit, but not far enough to keep from touching Dave's face. "I need to stop doing this."

"Doing what?" Like Dave doesn't know…

Kurt looks guiltily down at his feet. "Cheating," he says, very, very quietly. "It's not fair to Blaine. Or you."

"This wouldn't be a problem if you just kept your distance, you know." Dave puts a teasing lilt in his voice, trying to get the pained look out of Kurt's eyes. "Only you have this bad habit of following people into locker rooms…"

Kurt hits his shoulder and glares indignantly at him. "Shut up. What the hell am I going to do…?"

Dave feels like his chest might cave in, but says it anyway: "Stay with him."

"What?"

"I'm serious. Stay with him, be with him and stay the hell away from me. Its two birds with one stone, Kurt. You don't get tempted to cheat and evil angels won't get at you to get at me. It's practical."

"It's stupid," Kurt says, wriggling bad-temperedly in his arms.

Dave leans in for one last kiss. "But it's what's going to happen."

**-Hells Bells-**

Jo and Adam take Dave hunting the night before Kurt flies to New York for Show Choir Nationals.

There's a vampire nest that's been picking off kids from the local community college and using the furnace room of the nearby library as a bolthole. Jo wants to use the hunt as an opportunity for Dave to test the new hand-to-hand skills she and Adam have been drilling into him. When they're about a block away Adam hands him a machete, claps him on the shoulder and says, "Just don't let them bleed in your mouth."

To cut a long, gory story short, one of the fangs gets close enough to sink its pearly whites into Dave's shoulder – the pain is unreal – and Dave howls.

Only instead of sucking on his jugular the fang rears back shrieking and flailing, clutching its own throat.

Adam comes up behind it and takes its head off with his own machete. "What the ever-loving fuck was that?" he says, staring between Dave and the ex-vampire.

"Don't know," Dave gasp, one hand clamped over the bite. Jo tugs him into sitting down so she can start cleaning the wound. "Jo? Ideas?"

She shakes her head as she unpacks the first aid kit. "I thought you'd know," she tells Adam. "I mean you had an angel riding you for a while, right?"

"Yeah, but vampire reactions to sort-of angel blood never really came up," Adam says. "I mean, first Michael was going to battle Lucifer, then we were stuck in a metaphysical box with Lucifer and then he shoved me out when Castiel came for me and Sam. Not a lot of time for in-depth conversation."

They ponder this for a moment.

"Dude," Dave says. "Our lives are fucked up."

**-Four Seasons in One Day-**

"Man, what the hell is that?"

Azimio is staring at his neck. Dave meets his eyes briefly in the mirror and manages a rueful smile. He's peeled the bandage back to check the bite wound and it looks pretty horrific.

"Angry puppy," he says. "Very angry puppy…"

"No, dude, not…not that." Zee looks uncomfortable and a little hurt. "On the back of your neck."

_Fuck._

Dave reaches his hand back and touches the first chakra just under his hair, which he's let get a little longer to keep it hidden. Evidently it's not long enough; his hair is sticking to his head, glued from the sweat that's collected under his helmet during practice, leaving the grey shading on the back of his neck exposed.

"Is that a tattoo?" Zee demands.

Cat's out of the bag now. "Yeah…"

"What the hell, dude? You get ink and don't tell me? I would've –"

"Zee, seriously, not right now."

Zee glares at him. Getting tats someday was something they'd talked about – not idly either. Zee wants a memorial tat for his father, who'd been killed in the same military campaign as Hudson's dad. When they were naïve and fourteen they'd talked about joining up together if neither of them got a scholarship.

It's all shot to shit now.

"Look," Dave whispers, "I'm sorry, okay, I wanted to tell you, but…stuff's been happening and I'm kind of freaking out."

Zee frowns. Dave lets him think for a moment.

"After everyone's cleared out," he says eventually. "You tell me what the fuck has been up with you lately?"

Dave nods.

"Fine." Zee lifts his chin, but Dave knows he's at least halfway forgiven. "But it's only cos I wanna see what kind of lame-ass tat you got without me there to supervise."

Dave grins. They go to their respective lockers and futz around until everyone else has gone home. When the door bangs shut for the last time Zee strides over to him.

"'Fess up, DK."

Dave sighs and wonders how the fuck he's going to do this…

"Okay," he starts off. "You believe in God."

Zee looks wary. "Yeah."

"And angels?"

"Yeah."

"And demons?"

"I guess."

"Okay then."

Dave strips off his shirt.

"Jesus _fuck_," says Zee. "What the…?"

Dave puts one hand on his ribcage and runs a thumb down the back of the San Marco lion.

"Rise and shine," he says grimly, and the sleeping lion lifts its golden head, yawning to expose long, startlingly white teeth and shaking out its tawny mane. Its wings spread open as it gets to its feet.

Zee looks ill. "Shit ain't real," he says hoarsely. "I'm dreamin'."

"You're not," Dave says gently. "Zee, why do you think I've been coming in here early to get changed before practice and staying late after?"

"You done the same before."

"For different reasons."

Zee stares at him, fearful, but questioning. "DK, what the hell is going on?"

Dave takes a breath. "Can I trust you?" In for a penny, in for a pound.

Zee frowns. "Always."

"I'm not completely human."

There's a fraught moment…and then Zee says, "Bro. You better had a fuckin' _awesome_ explanation."

Dave sighs out with relief. "Got a few hours?"

"Hell _yeah_ I do."

**-Only If For a Night-**

Despite several sorrowful looks in several hallways, Kurt has been adhering to the keep-away-from-Dave part of the plan. Dave knows it's been hard for him though; Blaine is so removed from their day to day life at school that it can be hard to use him as a divider when they see each other all the damn time.

That's not the case right now.

Dave's on the other side of the café getting his mother a latte while she interrogates one of the seamstresses in the tailor's shop next door. He sees the whole thing at a remove, and their dialogue is barely audible to him with the coffee grinder constantly going off _right next to him_, but he still hears those words clear as a bell.

"I lo-"

"I'm breaking up with you."

Dave kind of wants to facepalm.

Blaine looks devastated, and Dave feels for the guy, he really does. Kurt looks extremely alarmed and like he _actually_ can't believe what just came out of his mouth. _Dave_ can't believe what just came out of his mouth.

"I don't understand," says Blaine.

"I – I can't really explain it," Kurt says honestly. "I just…I don't feel like we..." He closes his eyes briefly, like he's trying to figure himself out. "I feel like I'm looking for something and I keep trying to find it with you and _I can't_."

Blaine is… Dave gets that Kurt's trying to explain himself and be honest with him, but Blaine looks like his heart has been ripped out of his chest and put on a plate in front of him, _with garnish_.

"I just don't understand what you need from me," he says faintly. "I don't know what to give you…"

"I don't think you can," Kurt says gently. He gets to his feet and presses a kiss to Blaine's forehead.

Dave collects his coffee and leaves. He doesn't need to see any more.

**-Run-**

Rachel is perched on her bed, hands folded daintily in her lap. Her face is anxious and thoughtful, but resolute.

She looks very young.

"On one condition," she says to the empty room.

No one hears the answer but her, and she smiles radiantly.

"Then, yes."

White light blots out everything in the room.

Ten minutes later Sean Fretthold startles awake at a rustle of wing-beats in his room. He unthinkingly reaches up to rub sleep from his eyes.

He stops.

He stares at his hand.

He slowly lowers his hand and tells his toes to wriggle.

_They wriggle._

Sean prays that he's not dreaming, sits up and swings his feet over the side of his bed.

Then it's all too much and he shouts for his mom.

Hidden from sight, Rachel stands in the corner of the room and smiles.

* * *

><p><strong>AN:<strong> Yeah, I went there.


	5. PART FIVE

**Title: Blinding**

**Author:** 100YearGirl

**Pairing(s):** Kurtofsky

**Rating:** PG-13

**Word Count:** (this chapter) 1,906

**Warnings:** Coarse language, gore, SUPERNATURAL THEMES AND BY THEMES I MEAN CROSSOVER LIKE WHOA.

**Spoilers:** Okay this takes place in Glee Season 2, post Born This Way. For SPN it's placed in the year-that-wasn't (i.e. earlier this year) between Season 5 and Season 6. So, Dean is at the Braedon place playing happy families and Sam is soulless and off playing not-so-happy families with Clan Campbell. And Jo is…not dead…

**Author's Note:** Sorry for the delay guys, was having baby-cuddles :D

**Summary:**

_Something is happening to Dave. He's hearing voices. He knows things he shouldn't – couldn't – and feels like he should know more. Like he's forgotten something important, something crucial._

_And then there's the hex bag he found in his locker…_

* * *

><p><strong>PART FIVE<strong>

**-F.B.I.-**

There are two guys in suits talking to Jo when Dave swings by her office the last Tuesday of term.

He pauses and thinks of going in anyway, but the look Jo gives him past the tall guy warns him off. Whoever they are, they're people Jo wants to protect him from.

He decides to skip physics and heads for one of the old art rooms. Once there he hits speed dial seven on his phone and waits.

"Hello?"

"Adam, its Dave. I just went past Jo's office and there were two dudes in suits talking to her."

Adam is instantly business-like. "Describe them."

"Both tall, young guy was taller than the older guy. Young guy had a lot of hair, broad shoulders, lean. Older guy was bald. That's all I got. Jo didn't want me to go in, so I came and called you."

"You did good," Adam says. "Exactly what you were supposed to do."

"Adam, who are they?"

"Hunters," Adam says, "the tall guy sounds like he could be my half-brother, Sam."

"Lucifer's vessel?"

"Yeah. Only…I can't be sure, but…"

"What?"

Adam sighs. "I only caught glimpses of stuff down in the Cage; Michael tried to shield me from the worst of it, but Sam was at Lucifer's mercy. Michael shoved me towards the Cage's keyhole when Castiel tried to raise us. Lucifer would have had a death-grip on Sam."

"…you're saying he won't have come back in one piece?"

"Yeah. I mean, I've been thinking about it. Angels are primarily metaphysical beings, and so are human souls. So if Lucifer was going to really get a grip on some part of Sam…"

"It would be his soul," Dave finishes. "Fuck. So there's some guy with all your brother's memories and shit wandering around without a conscience, or morals or whatever?"

"Potentially, yeah."

"No wonder she didn't want me going in there."

"If we had our way you'd be at the other end of the country," Adam mutters. "This whole heavenly civil war _clusterfuck_ is complicating the hell out of our lives. Castiel brought Sam back, as far as I know, but I have no idea what for. And there's no guarantee he'll do what he's told. If I'm right, he won't feel any loyalty, so betraying friends…family…it won't be an issue. He'll have no trouble turning on Jo or me and especially not on you if he thinks it'll help him.

"You need to be sight out of mind, Dave. Jo and I might not be able to protect you if you aren't."

**-Opening-**

"Why are they here?" Kurt whispers.

He and Dave are hiding in the AV room and watching Sam Winchester and his companion walk back to their car in the school parking lot via Jacob ben Israel's perv-cams.

"Jo said it was cos this disabled kid woke up some time last night completely healed. Made headlines."

"Seriously? Like, what, Jesus was here?"

Dave snorts. "Somehow I don't think so. They thought it might be another angel."

Kurt looks anxious. "…isn't that kind of, I don't know, breaking angel-cover or something?"

"Something like that. Apparently they're – we're not supposed to just hand out miracles left, right and centre. They'll be looking for whoever did it. Kinda hope they don't find them…" He casts a sidelong look at Kurt. "So. How's Blaine?"

Kurt instantly goes red. "He's fine," he says, voice rising several octaves.

"Uh-huh."

"He is!"

"Oh, no, I _totally_ believe you, dude."

Kurt glares. "What do you know?" he demands, "and who told you?"

Dave looks back at the monitor. Sam and his companion are driving off in a black Dodge Challenger. "I was out with my mom last weekend. She took a dress into that tailor on Hereford Street. Asked me to go next door and get her a coffee while she bitched out one of the seamstresses."

"Oh…_shit_," Kurt mutters, who hardly ever swears. "You saw…"

"I saw. Heard a bit, too." He turns back to Kurt. "You know, I don't get you," he says not unkindly, "we're in the middle of one of the most dangerous situations on the _planet_ and you seem determined to not to lay low and stay out of the damn way."

Kurt fidgets. "I couldn't do it," he says eventually. "I couldn't stay with him when I just kept thinking of…" He flushes again.

Dave sighs and reaches for him. Kurt goes willingly and Dave presses a kiss to his forehead.

"Even if we weren't physically doing anything…it still felt like cheating," Kurt whispers against his neck. "My heart wasn't in it. It was cruel to stay with him."

"It would have been safer for you," Dave murmurs.

"It would have been using Blaine. And if these angels are as powerful as you and Jo and Adam seem to think they are, me having a boyfriend who isn't you isn't going to fool them." He presses a quick kiss to Dave's throat and then another to the corner of his mouth. "Do you think they'll come back?"

"Sam and Co?"

"Yeah."

"Hope not."

"Dave?"

"Hmm?"

"Missed you."

He grins at Kurt as he climbs into Dave's lap and then worms his hands under the smaller boy's shirt.

It's like coming home.

**-Sweet Dreams-**

Dave is lurking.

On the other side of the physics room door, Kurt is discussing Rachel Berry with his step-brother.

"Does she seem…different to you?" Kurt asks cautiously.

"Well, she's been quieter," Finn admits. "But I just figured she was kind a shook up from Nationals, y'know?"

"Yeah…still though. I mean, she's pretty quick to get back on the horse. When I talked to her on Monday she was already planning our next set list."

The conversation continues in this vein for a little while, and when Finn begs off and heads for his next class, Dave comes around the door and exchanges worried looks with Kurt.

"You heard all that?"

"Yeah. You think something's really up with Berry?"

"Well, she actually bitched out Jacob when he tried to interview her about Nationals."

"She doesn't do that anyway?"

"Says it's an unprofessional way to deal with the paparazzi."

"…right. Well, she smiled at me this morning."

"_What_?"

"I nearly faceplanted a door. It was freaky."

Now Kurt looks really alarmed. "Okay, _yes_, I do think there's something up with her. But what?"

Dave has a sneaking suspicion he knows _exactly_ what…

**-Minerva-**

Dave's all set to corner Berry, but she ends up cornering him.

He's just come out of English – Mrs Sampson was playing the original Star Wars movies in a fit of end-of-term generosity – when she sweeps up, smiling that thousand-watt smile at him again.

"David," she greets him cheerfully and getting far enough into his personal space to back him up against the lockers, "do you have a moment to talk privately?"

"Uh…I guess?"

"Brilliant!" And she loops an arm through him and drags him off – surprise, surprise – to the choir room.

Once he's been swung into a seat Berry takes a place at the front like she's about to perform and says, hands clasped in front of her, "I know everything about you."

She beams winningly.

Dave raises his eyebrows. "I really don't think so…"

"Oh, but I do!" she says earnestly. "I know that you're actually a fallen angel," Dave's stomach drops to his feet, "and that you're secretly nice, and that you like Kurt!"

Dave stares at her. "_What_?"

"Oh!" she says, as though just remembering something. He watches, stunned, as she skips over to turn off the lights then –

Light, white and sourceless, showing up the two dark arcs of wings as they spread from Rachel Berry's back. She's still beaming at him.

"Who are you?" he demands hoarsely.

"Rachel," she says, and there's a quieter, harder tone to her voice this time.

"I'm serious," he says, getting angry. "_Who are you_?"

This time she rolls her eyes. "You don't understand. I'm Rachel, but _she's_ Rachel, too."

Dave blinks at her. "You and…you and Berry have the same name?"

"Yes."

"Fuck that's confusing."

Berry, or Rachel, Dave's no sure who's got the reins at any one time, giggles.

The whole story comes out after that; how Berry was feeling down after ranking twelfth at Nationals and looking for some purpose in her life other than furiously preparing for next year's competition and making Finn Hudson her man-slave again, and so when Rachel began talking to her it was like it was meant to be.

"I'm part of something bigger," Berry whisper-gushes. "But not in that creepy reincarnated-Jesus-cult way."

As it turns out, Rachel Berry is one of those special people who can look at an angel in their true form without having their eyes burn out and their ear drums shatter and their heart explode in their chest. It also means she and Rachel can share her body instead of the angel having to shove the girl's consciousness into a corner to keep her from going mad.

(Although Dave would argue _that_ happened long before the whole vesselling thing.)

Something occurs to him though. "You're the one who healed that disabled kid."

Berry – he's sure it's her this time – blushes prettily and looks at her feet. She looks shy and small, and all of twelve. "It's why I said yes," she whispers.

"I thought you'd do it for your singing wheelchair buddy."

Now she looks guilty and earnest, desperate for him to understand. "Artie has a measure of independence. He can still use his arms and torso and he can _feel_… Sean was paralysed from the upper-chest down. He couldn't feel it when I held his hand. I couldn't just…" She trails off and her eyes well up.

"You couldn't leave him like that."

She nods. Dave sighs.

"Berry, you know about the hunters that are in town?"

She nods again, cautious. "Sam Winchester and Samuel Campbell. Castiel brought them back."

"Do you know what for?"

"To hunt monsters. So many hunters were killed in the Apocalypse… and monsters have been so strange lately. Werewolves at the half-moon, shapeshifters working in packs, foreign monsters appearing outside their regional homes…"

"So it's fucked right now?"

"Very," she says, nodding solemnly. It's so deeply weird hearing Berry talk unflinchingly about the state of the supernatural world, but Dave shoves that particular feeling aside and keeps interrogating.

"And why're you here, angel?"

Something in her expression changes; goes austere, and yet somehow soft. "You don't remember?" she asks, voice lower and steadier than Berry's.

Dave shakes his head. "I don't remember anything about being an angel. I can hear the others talking, and I can speak a bunch of languages, and sometimes I dream and know things I shouldn't, but…"

Rachel smiles. "I remember you, though," she says, "before you fell."

Dave can barely breathe. "Do you know why I…?"

Her smile falters. "No. One day you were there, then you weren't and the archangels said it was because you fell. I wasn't important enough to know why. And it was millennia ago; you've been reincarnating down a bloodline since the First War with Lucifer."

It was too much to hope for. "So, you don't know where my grace might be?"

She shakes her head. "I can help you look for it though."

Dave manages a smile. It's nice to have another person on his side.

Even if it is Rachel Berry.


	6. PART SIX

**Title: Blinding**

**Author:** 100YearGirl

**Pairing(s):** Kurtofsky

**Rating:** PG-13

**Word Count:** (this chapter) 1,803

**Warnings:** Coarse language, gore, SUPERNATURAL THEMES AND BY THEMES I MEAN CROSSOVER LIKE WHOA.

**Spoilers:** Okay this takes place in Glee Season 2, post Born This Way. For SPN it's placed in the year-that-wasn't (i.e. earlier this year) between Season 5 and Season 6. So, Dean is at the Braedon place playing happy families and Sam is soulless and off playing not-so-happy families with Clan Campbell. And Jo is…not dead…

**Author's Note:** Sorry about the short chapters guys, it's just been a bit easier to churn them out that way. Also, the playlist for this fic continues to grow at a rate of knots. I'm thinking I'll have to put a masterpost for it on my page by the time I've finished this fic.

**Summary:**

_Something is happening to Dave. He's hearing voices. He knows things he shouldn't – couldn't – and feels like he should know more. Like he's forgotten something important, something crucial._

_And then there's the hex bag he found in his locker…_

* * *

><p><strong>PART SIX<strong>

**-Seven Devils-**

Dave stays after school the next day. Kurt has a glee thing and Zee sits with Dave on the bleachers looking over the football field while he waits.

"_Hummel_?" Zee demands incredulously. "You're a badass fallen angel and you're _gay_. And secretly dating _Hummel_?"

"Pretty much," Dave says, leaning back against the bleachers and giving Zee a smile of supreme unconcern. Fuck it; he's got bigger problems, right?

Zee shakes his head. "How is this even my life?"

"Dude," Dave laughs, "how is this even _my_ life!"

They talk for a while, Zee having a few flail-moments and Dave checking his phone every ten minutes for a text from Kurt. Half an hour later he gets, **done! Freedom! Take me away! 3**

He chuckles and gets to his feet. "C'mon. I'll give you ride after I get Kurt."

Zee rolls his eyes. "Oh, I see how it is…"

They make their way down the bleachers and across the parking lot. There's an unfamiliar car there, near Jo's pick-up. The driver's side door is open and there's a guy sitting sideways in the seat with his feet on the asphalt, studying the cell phone clutched in his right hand.

He's good looking, like, _double-take_ good looking; all full lips and strong jaw and the kind of implied musculature that one usually sees in magazines or movies (or porn, though Dave's trying not to let his brain go there. And yes, Dave has a type, but that doesn't mean he blind to the joys of _other_ types…)

"That an Impala?" Zee says, openly admiring.

The guy looks up, gives this kind of tired smile. "Yeah, '67."

"_Nice_."

His smile gets up as far as his eyes this time. "Thanks. You guys go here?"

Dave nods. "Yeah."

"You know a Jo Harvelle?"

Zee and Dave exchange a look.

"The school nurse?" Zee asks.

The guy's eyebrows go up. "Sure. The school nurse. Know where I can find her?"

"Her office is on the way to the choir room," Dave offers.

The guy nods and introduces himself as Dean. Dave and Zee offer their names in return, but Dave feels his hackles go up.

Adam has told him about the rest of his family; he knows about _both_ of Adam's half-brothers, and the car that was practically a family home to them. This guy turning up here, now, with _that_ car and _that_ name, while Sam is most likely still in town…it's just a little too coincidental for Dave, and he wishes Adam or Jo or Rachel were here. _There are too many wild cards in this game right now._

Then the shit really hits the fan.

They're almost to Jo's office when there's a scream from the direction of the arts block.

All three of them freeze.

Zee's eyes are wide. "Was that..?"

"Don't know," Dave says, and his heart is beating hard enough to crack a rib. "But, we gotta go; Jo will know what to do."

"Whoa," Dean says, catching his shoulder, "kid, just hang on –"

Dave jerks free of him. "You don't get it," he snaps, "my _boyfriend_ is over there. That scream could have come from the choir room where he's waiting–!"

From behind him there's the sound of a door opening and they all swing around to see Jo emerge from her office. "Dave?" she says, "What's…"

She trails off, and Dave knows her eyes have just caught on Dean, because when he looks back at the hunter he has exactly the same expression of shock and longing on his face.

"Hi, Jo," Dean says thickly.

"Hey," she whispers back. "Long time, no see."

"I'll say," a female voice announces jovially. They all swing 'round again and are greeted by the sight of a young woman grinning at them from the way they came…only she's not just a woman; Dave can see that oily, shifting face under and over her victim's human one. It seethes and spits blackness, and Dave feels ill and angry and has the sudden urge to do something violent.

Somewhere nearby is the sound of growling and Dean takes a quick step back. Dave see's Jo flinch out of the corner of his eye, and it draws the demon's attention as surely as a beacon through the night.

"Well look at you, Jo," she says, like she's just spotted an old friend on a mall trip, "with your guts back inside you and everything." She grins, and Dave clenches his fists. "Guess my puppies didn't do as good a job as we thought." She shrugs. "I'm up for round two if you are."

"_Meg_," Dean snarls.

"I missed you too, Deano," Meg croons. "Guess who else did?"

The growling rises to a low roar and there's the sound of claws on the linoleum hallway. Dean draws a handgun from the waist of his jeans and cocks it. Dave hears Zee swear under his breath.

Meg giggles. "Relax, sweetie, we're not here for you." Her eyes snap black and she raises her hand.

She points straight at Dave.

"We're here for _him_."

**-Howl-**

The air snaps and ripples, and with his strange new vision, Dave can see the inky blasts of demons as they tear time and space to appear around them, as though out of thin air.

They have passengers.

Dave is aware of some of the other glee kids clasped tight in various demons' arms (Mercedes, Quinn, Hudson and Puck) but all he can see is Kurt, held so tightly across his chest that his feet dangle off the ground. His throat is exposed and there's a knife, long and discoloured, angled perfectly to spear his jugular. His eyes are wild, flicking back and forwards, and Dave can hear the soft sounds of panic he makes, especially when his gaze finds Dave.

He sees Kurt's mouth shape 'no', but it's too late for that; Dave is already in motion.

Dave gets two steps before Zee and Dean have each grabbed a shoulder and hauled him back.

"You can't help him like that," Dean snarls in his ear.

"Let me go," Dave rasps.

"No," Dean says, "_wait_."

"Yeah, Davey," Meg sing songs, "wait." She smiles coyly. "You don't have to fight us, you know. You're all we want." The smile turns into a scowl. "There are already hunters in this damn town; we don't need more of them showing up. So you just hand your sweet self over and we'll let your boy-toy and the Rainbow Brigade go."

"Let them go first," Dave snaps.

Meg chortles. "How dumb do you think I am? Walk over here and we'll drop 'em."

"What if he doesn't?" Dean demands.

"Then I let my puppies off their leashes and watch the fun." There's a low snarl of approval from her left.

Dave shrugs Dean and Zee from his shoulders. Zee tries to keep his grip.

"DK, Dave, _no_," Zee says urgently. "Don't do this, bro, please, _please_ don't do this!"

Dave can't look at him. "I have to."

"No you don't," a voice says cheerfully.

Next thing there's a wet scream from behind Meg; the demon holding Quinn has dropped her and his knife and is thrashing like a fish on a line, gurgling up blood while his whole body flashes with orange light.

The white knife spearing his heart withdraws and he drops to the ground. Rachel smiles, angel sword glowing ruby-red with blood. There's more of it spattered across her unicorn blouse and freckled along her left cheekbone.

"What the fuck?" Meg snarls.

"Hi," says Rachel, pulling Quinn to her feet and putting the other girl behind her. "I don't think we've met. I'm Rachel." They all watch her twirl her angel sword, blood pattering from the tip onto the linoleum. She smiles again when there's the sound of wing-beats behind Jo. "And he's Castiel."

She looks straight at Meg. "And you're dead."

**-To Victory-**

Dave doesn't really have time to process what's happening. There's the furious beating of many celestial wings and then there are angels everywhere. White angel-swords flash in nimble hands and Mercedes, Hudson and Puck are abruptly free and zapped from the impromptu battlefield by angels. Dean drags him and Zee back towards Jo and her office – and Jo has a shotgun in her hands.

"They let you keep that on school property?" Dean asks.

Jo racks a shot. "What they don't know doesn't hurt them. Get behind me."

"We have to get Kurt," Dave demands.

"Dave –"

Maybe it's his day for idiocy, but he doesn't have time to fuck around arguing with them; Kurt is in the middle of an angel/demon skirmish, possibly still in the power of demons willing to kill him to get to Dave.

He's not going to let that happen if he possibly can.

When he sees an angel fall, his own knife jutting from his chest, Dave doesn't think – he moves. Ducking and darting between the combatants, he snatches up the angel sword and – and it's like he's never moved before this moment. And now he's moving like he's supposed to.

Like an angel.

A black-eyed figure comes at him, going for his blind spot, but Dave turns, too quick, and plunges his knife into the offender's chest, pulling it free and spinning just in time to put it into the back of one threatening Rachel. Sparks shower, orange light flickering wildly, blood spattering and arching. Rachel grins at him, and the savage look on her face is delightful and disturbing.

"Nice of you to join the party, big brother," she whispers.

"Help me get Kurt."

"Love to."

Moving in tandem with her is like dancing – or how dancing should be. They cover each other's blind spots, twist and duck and dart and spin and _stab_.

But when they get to Kurt he's in the worst set of hands.

Meg has an arm around his throat while Kurt scrabbles futilely against her grip, blue eyes fixed on the ceiling and round with fear. Her knife is held to his bellybutton.

"Let him go, Meg," Dave grinds out.

She shakes her dark head. "Come with me and I'll let him go."

"No, she won't," Rachel says with deceptive softness. "She's lying." Her tiny hand tightens on her sword. "I can smell it."

Meg snarls at her. "Shut up!" She switches liquid black eyes back to Dave. "Come with me or I'll gut him, right now, right in front of you. You know I'll do it."

"Fine. Let him go."

"David," Rachel says, her face anguished, "don't go…"

"Yes, David," says a deep voice, "stick around."

"Raphael, NO!" Dave hears Castiel roar.

But they're all too late.

Dave turns and the archangel that has appeared behind him thrusts his angel sword into Dave's gut.

Kurt screams.

* * *

><p><strong>AN:<strong> :D Hi there.


	7. PART SEVEN

**Pairing(s):** Kurtofsky

**Word Count:** (this chapter) 3,000

**Warnings:** Coarse language, gore, SUPERNATURAL THEMES AND BY THEMES I MEAN CROSSOVER LIKE WHOA.

**Spoilers:** Okay this takes place in Glee Season 2, post Born This Way. For SPN it's placed in the year-that-wasn't (i.e. earlier this year) between Season 5 and Season 6. So, Dean is at the Braedon place playing happy families and Sam is soulless and off playing not-so-happy families with Clan Campbell. And Jo is…not dead…

**Author's Note:** Oh hai thar – long time no see!

**Summary:**

Turning and turning in the widening gyre  
>The falcon cannot hear the falconer;<br>Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;  
>Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,<br>The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere  
>The ceremony of innocence is drowned;<br>The best lack all conviction, while the worst  
>Are full of passionate intensity…<p>

_-WB Yeats, 'The Second Coming'-_

* * *

><p><strong>PART SEVEN<strong>

**-Evil Angel-**

It's like time has slowed.

He dimly registers that he's dropped his sword, that Rachel and Kurt are screaming, one with rage and the other with terror, but all he can see is Raphael's face, his burning eyes, the spite and cold savagery that fills them.

"Goodbye, brother," the archangel intones, "for good this time."

"NO!" Castiel roars again, hauling Raphael back. His sword is yanked free from Dave's stomach, and he falls, crumpling to the linoleum floor.

"David," Kurt is gripping his shoulder, tears pouring down his pale face, "_David_, please, _please_, c'mon, look at me, look at me, sweetheart, please…"

"Help me get him up."

Dean is there suddenly, and he and Zee are hoisting him up, bracing him under his arms and Dave sobs at the burst of pain it brings.

They half-drag, half-carry him down the hallway, away from the sounds of continued battle; the remaining demons struggling to escape, caught between Castiel's angels and Raphael's. He hears Rachel swearing in Enochian as she covers their retreat with Jo.

Dave passes out a few times, and comes to when they set him down. He looks around blearily, taking in the dimly lit room. They're in older section of the library; books are stacked high around them, and the library computers still give off a distant glow from further into the stacks.

Kurt is there, cool hands touching his face and gripping one of his hands. His tears are still wet on his face. Dean and Zee are over by the opening between the shelves that leads to their little cul-de-sac and Rachel is pacing up and down one wall. For the first time he notices that Quinn is still with them, curled up on Kurt's other side, watching them all with wide green eyes.

"Dave…" Kurt breathes, cupping his cheek. He looks wrecked.

"Hi," Dave rasps.

Jo is on his other side, and he realizes she's pulled his shirt up to expose the wound.

"How bad?" Dave asks.

"Bad," she tells him. "He meant to kill you, Dave. I think he was going to dig for your heart or spine."

"Can you," he chokes a little, and tastes blood. _Fuck._ "Can you fix it?"

"I don't know."

"Can Rachel?"

She looks up to meet his eyes, and just like that Dave knows.

He's going to die. Today or tonight, but sometime in the next few hours or so, he's going to die.

"Rachel already tried," Jo whispers, "she tried several times while you were passed out. She thinks Raphael did something to his blade. She can't undo what he did."

Dave nods. "He wanted to be sure this time."

Jo's eyes narrow.

"What do you mean, 'this time'?" Dean says.

"I figured it out," Dave explains, "when he stabbed me. I…I got a flash, like when I dream. It makes sense now.

"I didn't fall from heaven. I was thrown from it, by Raphael."

**-Martial Law-**

Rachel hears them first.

"We have to move," she says, taking Quinn's hand and getting her to her feet again. Quinn doesn't let go, and Rachel sighs. "Demons coming down the left corridor. We should find somewhere with doors we can bolt shut."

"We'll head for the furnace room," Jo says. "The doors are solid and we can chain them shut."

"What about salt, iron?" Dean demands.

"I've got a friend on their way with supplies," Jo says, not meeting his eyes, "he'll meet us down there."

Rachel goes first as Dean and Zee haul Dave to his feet, Kurt hovering close by and watching with furious, anxious eyes. When she quietly calls back, 'clear,' they shuffle out – Dave keeps a white-knuckle grip on his consciousness, focusing on Kurt, on his face, on his hands and eyes, anything but the constant, tearing pain in his gut. It feels like something's eating away at his insides, burning him up from the inside…

They get two corridors away from the furnace room when Dean draws them sharply to a halt, going for his gun and handing Dave's left arm off to Kurt. Kurt tucks himself tight against his side, taking his weight, and Dave takes a moment to breathe in, finding some measure of balance.

They watch Dean carefully edge up to the next corner, gun held two handed and pointed to the floor…the tension ratchets to a knife-edge…Dean looks back at them once, then whips round the corner and swings his gun up…

His face goes white, lush mouth slackening and he breathes, "Adam?"

"Hi Dean," says Adam.

Dean stares at his little half-brother. "You're…you're alive."

"Yeah, it's like the greatest undead hits round here," Adam mutters. He cuts a look at Jo. "You tell him about –?"

"Haven't exactly had time," Jo says back. "We should keep moving."

"Tell me about _what_, Jo," Dean says, stepping in front of her and looking suspiciously between her and Adam.

"We don't have time for this. Dave's bleeding out and if we don't…"

Something in her expression – heartache, and loss, and desperation – must get to Dean, or be familiar, because his face softens, jaw relaxing, and he nods.

"Fine. But when we get to the furnace room…"

Jo nods too. "When we get to the furnace room."

Kurt reluctantly allows Dean to take back Dave's left arm as they make their way downwards.

**-Ilah, Silent War-**

The furnace room is dark, as expected, and the doors are solid. The air is thick and muggy, but Dave feels cold, all cold, except for the burning pit in his stomach. The voices are frantic, fevered, but removed…it's like he's hearing them call to each other over long distances instead of whispering in his ear.

"Dave…David…"

He peels his eyes open, lids feeling like they're made of lead, and looks over at Kurt.

Maybe it's just his tired eyes, but Kurt looks haloed, light forming a corona around his head, spilling down his shoulders. Something is reflecting onto his chest so that it looks like his heart is glowing under his ribs. His eyes are the ocean right now, the ocean at night with living luminescence surging beneath its surface. When he touches Dave it's like starbursts on his skin; a warm relief.

"Fall asleep again?" he slurs.

"Yeah," Kurt whispers back. Dave can hear the unshed tears in his voice. "Just for a little while."

"'m sorry."

"It's okay."

Dave's eyes are blurring, but he can just make out the thick lines of salt across the doorway, the vents, and the tiny window that lets in a sliver of fading daylight. The others are ranged around the room, talking softly. Adam is no doubt explaining things to Dean and Zee. Jo looks washed out and tired; he knows she feels like she failed here, like she couldn't do what Castiel asked of her.

It doesn't escape him that Dean sits very close to her, their shoulders pressed close so that Jo is leaning on him a little.

He feels something warm against his forehead, and sees that Quinn is hovering on his other side, gently applying a damp cloth to his face. He watches her dazedly for a moment, and to his surprise, she speaks.

"You're really an angel?" she asks, very, very softly.

"Yeah."

"Rachel too?"

"Kind of. She…Berry's sharing her body with Rach."

He watches her brow crease as she puzzles that out. "So…the…the angel's name is Rachel too?"

"Yeah."

"That's really confusing."

Dave manages a muzzy smile. "S'what I said."

He sees her and Kurt exchange a look, something flying between them – apologies maybe, though he has no idea what for, and something like understanding.

"…everything we believe is wrong, isn't it?" she murmurs.

"Not everything," Kurt says. "Hope still a good thing, and love."

"Faith," Dave puts in, trying to keep his voice above a whisper, "in good things. In people." He squeezes Kurt's hand and feels him squeeze back.

And then the doors begin to rattle on their hinges.

**-No Light, No Light-**

They're on their feet in an instant, Dean and Jo both flipping the safety off and aiming at the door, braced like they're waiting for a hurricane.

Dave can make out a blur that might be Adam standing next to Zee's bulk, and Dave can make out, "Its easy…just cup the butt of it with this hand…squeeze, don't pull…you'll be fine…remember to breathe," and Zee nodding his head. Even with his curtailed vision, Dave can see the whites of his best friend's eyes, and knows he's deathly afraid.

Beyond the bowing doors comes the roaring of the hounds and the screams of dying angels.

Quinn is sobbing next to him, her hands over her mouth. Rachel comes over, drawing the other girl to her feet, keeping her close. She stands in front of him and Kurt, eyes filled with wrath and fire and despair, with Quinn shaking at her back.

Kurt is a brightly burning effigy at his side. It's like he's lit up from the inside, like light is trying to find a way out through his very pores. His heart is an internal fire of white flames, but Dave is mesmerized by his eyes again. They're the eastern sky at dawn, like somewhere in Kurt's soul a sun is about to rise.

Dave knows the end is near for him – the burning pit in his side is the core of the world, molten and alive and insidious – but he doesn't want this to be the end for everyone else, even though he knows it will be. It must be. There's no way out anymore, if there ever was.

He doesn't want it to be their end, but he'll do _anything_ to keep it from being the end of Kurt.

And then he knows.

He looks at Kurt's burning heart and reaches up, gripping the front of his shirt.

"Kurt…"

Kurt looks at him, glorious eyes bleak and lost and desperate. He touches Dave's face, cups his cheek. "It's okay," he whispers, voice wet, tears silent on his luminescent skin. "It'll be okay."

Dave gives him a rueful smile. "I'm sorry."

Kurt frowns, but then his eyes widen. "Dave, no, _no_…"

"Kurt, I'm sorry."

Kurt's face crumples and he curls close to Dave's side. (The doors shudder violently and the iron chains strain to hold. Their friends step back, their faces set.) He's so close now…

"Sorry for what?" Kurt breathes.

"For everything," Dave whispers back. Kurt sobs. "Everything but this."

He puts the last of his strength into the motion and reaches up, gripping the back of Kurt's neck and steadying his face, pulling him down. Their lips meet and the world goes away. Everything is silent. There's nothing but them…

But even through his closed eyelids, Dave can see clear as day as Kurt's hands tighten on his arm, on his shoulder. He can see light bleed from his skin, sliding upwards, coalescing in rainbowed, blue-white rivulets that run like a map of veins, flowing towards Dave. They flicker and pulse across Kurt's hands and sink into Dave, and each point of contact is a scream, a gasp, a whisper, a roar unending.

He sees it when that nest of light, that beating diamond in Kurt's chest begins to move. He can see it break apart and slip like glowing silk up Kurt's throat.

When it passes from his mouth to Dave's, tingling like cold fire on his lips and tongue, the world goes white.

He remembers _everything_…

**-Death is the Road to Awe-**

The light that blasts from David catches them all unawares.

Rachel and Quinn barely have time to haul Kurt away, weak with the loss of the grace, and brace him between them. Rachel covers their eyes, shouting for the others to do the same; they're at ground zero of an angel rising.

Only something is very wrong.

Grace-light, blue and white and green, roars out from the epicentre of David's bowed form, but there's so, _so_ much of it. This isn't a star going supernova… this is the re-emergence of a _galaxy_.

When the first wave hits them, Rachel's spine ignites inside her vessel and she cries out, her voice lost in the screaming of the celestial storm. She feels something come loose inside herself, some part of her own grace unbinding and the sensation is like blood rushing back into a limb, or suddenly remembering the name of an old friend after so many years…

Raphael lied.

Raphael threw David down, and then _changed_ things…

When she looks at David, at the grace that swarms over the shivering remains of his human soul, she can see his wings rebuilding. Their framework spears from his back in swords of blue-white brilliance, covering over an instant later with celestial flesh and feathers.

There are eight of them.

She realises then, that this is not just an angel rising.

_This is the rebirth of an Archangel._

She looks down at the children tucked against her, and sees Kurt looking directly into the heart of the storm, his blue eyes lit up and his heart upon his young face.

She hears him whisper, "David…"

As though his name were a trigger, the storm begins to spiral. Light, hot and golden, blossoms from the outer edges of the storm. Wave after repeated wave of it breaks against them. The force is such that Rachel risks opening her wings to wrap around Kurt and Quinn and has to turn her face away.

She sees Adam and Azimio huddled against an adjacent wall. Dean and Jo are wrapped around each other and braced beside the doors, which have been beaten open by the hell hounds. She can see them cowering just beyond the frayed salt-lines with their tails down and their sharp ears pressed to their scaled necks.

The spiralling light begins to tighten, coalescing. For a moment it burns as brightly as a captive sun…

And then it explodes.

The final wave knocks all of them flat, and the howl that accompanies it comes dangerously close to permanently deafening the humans. Rachel hears the hell hounds die in the blast, shattered into shards and smudges by the holy light.

Kurt cries out once and presses his face to her shoulder. She can feel his tears on her neck.

When the open their eyes, the light is completely gone.

And so is David.

**-Returns a King-**

He moves and the air cries out for his return as he passes, the winds whispering his name, filled with reverence. The breeze, the dust, the storms and stars and trees – they remember him.

They have always remembered him, while his brethren were forced to forget…

David stands atop Everest and gazes out at the snow-capped peaks for a moment. He remembers this. He sat on this mountain with Rachel once, and told her that one day this would be the closest a human would get to Heaven without taking his feet from the Earth.

She and Anael were amongst his favourites, his favoured little sisters…but Anael is dead. He can no longer find her voice amongst the chorus of the Host, and Rachel is far from here, back in Lima…

Lima.

Home.

_Kurt._

He is there in the blink of an eye, and the burnt out remains of a high school corridor are spread before him. It's a miracle that the building still stands, considering what battled here. What still battles here…

Raphael, he finds, has their younger brother pinned to a set of lockers, which have been crushed behind Castiel, no doubt by the force of his vessel impacting them. He is covered in blood, and his blue eyes are wild with fear. This was never a war he could win, and now he knows it.

David smiles as Castiel's fevered gaze latches onto him.

"Hello, Brother," he murmurs. "Did you miss me?"

Raphael drops his quarry and turns, borrowed eyes widening. David can taste the fear falling from him, invisibly tainting the air. It seethes around him, anguished.

"No," his brother breathes. "No, you're supposed to be dead! How are you alive?"

"What can I say," David sneers, "it's a God given talent."

He charges Raphael and they grapple for a minute, wings beating against each other invisibly as their flesh limbs fight for dominance. There's a concussive blast that sends the locker doors screaming on their hinges – Castiel covering his face – and Raphael is thrown the length of the hallway.

David looks down at Castiel. "You are well?"

"I'll live."

"Oh good." He turns to gaze down the hallway at Raphael, who is dazedly climbing to his feet. "You should go. Find your friends. The human authorities will have been called by this point – your pet hunters will be on their way soon. And Dean Winchester will want an explanation for his brother's missing soul."

Castiel looks miserable under his blood-stains, but he staggers to his feet and steps across space-time.

David smiles and makes his way towards Raphael. "You were forever underestimating me," he says conversationally, "and I you, I suppose. The difference is…"

He grips Raphael by the collar of his vessel's shirt and hauls him against the nearest wall, meeting his wide, furious eyes and smiling serenely.

"…I learned from my mistake. You clearly haven't."

He draws his sword back with his other hand, makes to strike – only to have Raphael give an almighty twist in his grip and half-wrench himself free, just enough to vanish.

But no before David's blade pierces his side.

Raphael's departure leaves the air heaving with ash and white sparks that twirl like fireflies in a storm.

David stands still, a little breathless, and looks down at his angel sword. The blade has two inches of blood on it – a palpable hit, but not a fatal one.

"You'll keep," David murmurs, before flexing his wings once and disappearing.

For now he has more pressing matters to attend to; somewhere, Kurt is weeping, and that simply cannot stand.

David smiles, and _reaches_…

* * *

><p><strong>AN:<strong> Hi there! Sorry it's taken me so long, RL has been CRAZY. Although we've just got the epilogue to go now (thank fuck).

Also, because I'm not above pimping, you should all go contribute to the latest Comment Fic Thing that's up on the KarofskyLove LJ :D


	8. EPILOGUE

**Pairing(s):** Kurtofsky

**Rating:** PG-13

**Word Count:** (this chapter) 3,599

**Warnings:** Coarse language, gore, SUPERNATURAL THEMES AND BY THEMES I MEAN CROSSOVER LIKE WHOA.

**Spoilers:** Okay this takes place in Glee Season 2, post Born This Way. For SPN it's placed in the year-that-wasn't (i.e. earlier this year) between Season 5 and Season 6. So, Dean is at the Braedon place playing happy families and Sam is soulless and off playing not-so-happy families with Clan Campbell. And Jo is…not dead…

**Author's Note:** ITS DONE – HOW DID I EVEN MANAGE THAT O.o Also, hi.

* * *

><p><strong>EPILOGUE<strong>

**-Ruby Night-**

Rachel sits curled in the back of the ambulance beside Kurt.

Kurt is still shaking, despite the warmth she projects at him under the blanket, attempting to ward off the night chill and the memory of horror that has the boy beside her quivering.

"He's not dead," she says again. "He's just changed."

Kurt nods, eyes still closed, teeth chattering.

She bites her lip and reaches for him a little, brushing the fine edge of her grace over the surface of his soul. He flinches, turns wide eyes to her, but settles after a moment. His teeth stop chattering, and the shakes come done to a gentle quiver.

"Thought that might be the case," she murmurs.

"…the…the grace?" Kurt says softly, still wide-eyed and looking very young. Rachel silently marvels how all that angelic star-stuff could fit inside his tiny human heart without tearing him to pieces…

Rachel nods. "It's like you're in withdrawal," she says.

He sighs out roughly and puts his face against her shoulder. "It's like something's _missing_," he whispers.

There are hesitant footsteps, and Quinn is peering in at them. There's a grey medical blanket around her shoulders, and hollow tones hiding under her eyes. "You guys okay?"

"Been better," Kurt says to Rachel's shoulder.

"I'm fine."

Quinn nods. "They're asking everyone what happened." She smiles ruefully. "Everyone's lying, but Jo's making sure they're doing a good job of it, so."

Rachel smiles, but it feels wane. "Are you alright?"

"I will be." There's a commotion behind them, and Quinn looks over her shoulder, eyes widening. "No way…"

Rachel gets a familiar familial blast of presence and it's all the warning they get before a fireman comes into view, leading a slightly sooty, but otherwise completely untouched David Karofsky.

Kurt makes a sound like he's been stabbed and clutches Rachel's hand so hard it would bruise if she were entirely human.

An EMT comes over as they approach the ambulance, asking Dave if he's alright.

"I'm fine," he says, eyes finding Kurt's as he does. "Completely fine, honestly."

The EMT nods, does a quick check on Kurt and leaves them to distribute more blankets.

Dave comes closer, and Rachel can _smell_ the archangel on him. He smells like home, and safety, and mountains. It's just lovely. She smiles as Kurt wriggles out of his blanket and practically falls into Dave's arms, pressing his face against the other boy's throat and getting a white-knuckle grip on his shirt. Dave presses his face to Kurt's tousled hair, smiling.

"I really am okay, you know," Rachel hears him murmur.

Kurt nods wordlessly against his neck. Rachel suspects he's crying a little.

"Dave?"

Dave looks up at Quinn, eyebrows raised questioningly.

"Are you…I mean, did you…?"

Dave grins and manages to free one hand from Kurt, reaching out and gently brushing Quinn's forehead with his fingertips.

"Oh," she says weakly, eyes glazed with tears. "That's…"

_Peace._ A peace from all the things that haunt her, and perspective to let her grow.

Rachel climbs down from the ambulance and leans against Quinn, silently offering support. Quinn takes her hand automatically in what is almost becoming a habit. Rachel tugs her away.

"C'mon," she murmurs, "we should go find the others. Let them know we're okay."

She catches sight of her vessel's parents huddled by the cordon around the school's entrance and begins making her way towards them. Others are there too; Quinn's mother, her face the colour of chalk, and Finn standing with his face pressed to his mother's shoulder. Mercedes sees them and calls out.

Rachel puts a smile on her face and draws Quinn over to them.

**-He Had a Good Time-**

Dave will never forget the look on Burt Hummel's face when he catches sight of Kurt leading him over to his father – by the hand.

There's mistrust there, very plain, and anger…and utter, utter puzzlement…

Right up until Kurt releases Dave's and careens into his father's arms.

Dave politely goes and stands with Jo and Dean, and Zee and Adam around the Impala. Jo smiles like the sun when she sees him. It's so startling, that expression; Dave's never really seen her smile like that. She hugs him while Kurt talks to his dad, grinning.

"You're really okay?"

"Yeah. All wings present and accounted for."

Dean snorts. "I'll say. You know you knocked out the power all the way to Columbus?"

"I put it back," Dave mutters defensively, and both Dean and Adam laugh. Zee smiles, but he looks tired. Dave nudges his friend's shoulder. "How're you doing, dude?"

Zee shrugs. "Been better, man, but y'know. Alive and all."

Dave smiles, reaching up and dabbing to fingers to Zee's temple. The other boy starts and blinks at Dave.

"Feel better?"

"Hells yeah…"

Dave grins, and this time Zee does laugh, sounding a little giddy. Dean gives Dave an intent look.

"What is it, Dean?"

"We need to have a talk later, in private."

Dave nods, feeling quietly sad for a moment. "About Sam."

"Yeah…"

"Dave?"

Kurt comes over, reaching for Dave's hand and drawing him gently over to Burt. "Come meet Dad."

Ohh, this could go badly…

It's certainly a little uncomfortable. Dave is very aware of his recent past around Burt, and Burt is wading through memories of his child wane with fear; Dave can feel it, like a haze behind the older man's eyes. Still…

"Kurt says you saved him," Burt says, straight off the bat. "Got him away from one of those gang members, when she came at him with a knife." His eyes tighten with pain at the idea, and Dave feels an echo of that moment, the helplessness and the barely leashed savagery.

He casts a quick look at Kurt. "Yes, sir."

"Said you almost took one in the gut to do it."

"Um. Yeah. I wasn't paying a lot of attention…" he mutters, and it's ridiculous, but he feels like he's admitting to not hearing a question in English instead of not realizing an archangel had snuck up on him with a sword.

Kurt's hand tightens on his and when he looks at him, he sees that Kurt's eyes are a little shiny. It's all still so close for him, so immediate. It hits Dave that he only became himself – really himself – all of two hours ago. It's deeply odd. He squeezes Kurt's hand back, sending a pulse of care and affection and grace through to him, and Kurt lets out a silent sigh of relief.

This exchange is not totally unnoticed by Burt, who clears his throat pointedly and says to Dave, "well, thank you, for taking care of Kurt. I know you didn't have to but…"

"I kinda did," Dave says solemnly, and leaves it at that. Burt will reach his own conclusions.

Burt apparently does. He reaches out, shakes Dave's hand. His sincerity is warm and smells like woodlands after rain.

"Still. Thank you."

**-Looking Back-**

The last few days of the school year are weird.

"Seriously, that's the story they're going with?"

Dave nods. "Gangs on PCP."

"Our lives are an episode of _Buffy_," Kurt marvels, staring at the wreckage of the corridor where the 'gang war' took place.

Dave chuckles, shaking his head. "C'mon, don't wanna be late for summer reading assignments."

Kurt sighs, letting himself be guided away. "So nothing changes, really? I mean, you're a frigging archangel –"

"Gee, thanks."

"– And I'm a reincarnated grace-holder, or whatever, and Rachel's a vessel and Jo and Adam are resurrected hunters and yet _nothing's going to change_."

"That's kind of the point, you know," Dave says as they wade through clusters of students to get to Kurt's locker. "Humanity needs normalcy to keep functioning. Otherwise you get fun things like panic riots."

Kurt shakes his head. "I don't want that, I just…" He leans against the locker bank and looks up at Dave with a small, rueful smile. "After all we went through I feel like we should have something to show for it, y'know? Something tangible, that we can share with the world. Something others can recognize." He snorts. "Or maybe I'm being an attention-whore about this. I don't know."

"I do," Dave says mildly. "And you're forgetting; there is one major change since all this went down."

Kurt's eyebrows lift. "Oh really? Pray, do tell."

Dave pretends to look thoughtful. "Well, I can definitely say, beyond a shadow of a doubt that before for all this angel business happened, that I positively, absolutely, would not have done this in public."

"Done what?"

Dave grins brilliantly and draws Kurt close with a hand on the other boy's hip, then cups his jaw with the other one and kisses him. And _kisses_ him.

Right in front of everyone…

**-Home-**

Shelby tears her gaze from the little girl on her play mat, cheerfully colouring outside the lines while Puck watches and occasionally offers new crayons. She turns to Quinn, who stands on the opposite side of the breakfast bar, smiling at the tableau.

"I want you and Noah to be a part of her life," Shelby murmurs, and Quinn meets her eyes steadily. "But I need the people in her life to be good, steady people. I need her to know that I'm her mom…" She trails off when Quinn tentatively puts her hand over Shelby's.

"I know. You're her mom, but she has an aunt and uncle who love her very much." She smiles. "We can do that, I promise. Me and Puck…we can be those people."

Shelby smiles. "You have no idea how happy it makes me to hear you say that."

**-One-**

Sean opens the front door, sees Finn and Rachel, sees their utter lack of surprise at him _walking around and opening the door for them_, and then flings himself at them.

Rachel is laughing as he hugs her, lifting her briefly off her feet and swinging her in a gentle circle.

"It was you, I know it, I _dreamed_ it," he breathes into her hair. "I don't know how, but…thank you_, thank you_."

Rachel grins at a smiling Finn over Sean's shoulder.

"You are so welcome…"

**-All These Things That I've Done-**

Castiel withdraws his hand from Sam's chest, looking grim.

"It is as you suspected, Adam. His soul is not there."

"Dean, if I had known…" Samuel says, miserable.

Dean casts a look at his grandfather, nodding. "I know." He sighs, scrubs his face. "What the hell am I gonna do with you, Sammy?"

Sam shrugs. "Untie me? Seriously, I'm starting to chaff here."

Dean looks enquiringly at Dave. "He any danger to us?"

"If he tries anything he won't get far," Dave murmurs. He snaps his fingers and the knots loosen themselves and fall from Sam's wrists and ankles. He gets to his feet and steps away from the chair.

"So," he says, rubbing his wrists. "No soul. Not seeing a big deal here. I mean, I'm still me."

"Without a conscience," Adam puts in. "Which, y'know, in your particular profession, probably not the greatest thing to be without."

"I still get the job done," Sam defends.

"At what cost?" Dean says, giving his brother a penetrating look.

And because he's Sam minus the soul, he just shrugs, looking nonplussed.

Dave has seen enough. "I'm getting it back."

All eyes turn to him, disbelieving.

"You're _what_?" Adam says, eyebrows going up in faint alarm.

"I'll get Sam's soul back." At their continued looks of incredulity, Dave rolls his eyes. "For the love of…I don't see how the rest of you can," he snaps.

"Okay, I'm just going to say what everyone is thinking," Dean mutters. "_How_?"

"Yeah," Adam chimes in. "I mean, it's in a box with Lucifer, whose gotta have the mother of all death grips on it…"

"Add to which it will not be in a great state when you retrieve it," Castiel says. "Lucifer has had it within his clutches for what will be nigh on fifty years by the reckoning of the Cage. If introduced back into Sam's body in that state it could well cause him to lose his mind."

Sam does not look pleased by this. "Whoa. Whoa, hey, guys, come on. Shouldn't I have a say in this…"

Dave rolls his eyes, time-steps across the motel room and presses two fingers to Sam's temple. He falls backwards onto the nearest bed, insensible.

"Just trust me one this, okay guys?" he says to the rest of the room's occupants. "I know how to get his soul back."

**-Yoü and I-**

"So, you're staying?"

Jo rolls her eyes. "Where the hell else would I go, Dave? We've only got a frigging celestial civil war to handle."

He grins. "Well, fuck, I don't know. I'm glad you're sticking around though."

She smiles at him indulgently and sips her coffee. Around them, the Lima Bean is just starting to get dribs and drabs of its morning clientele. The sunlight that filters through the windows still has cool edges to it.

"Pretty sure Dean is too."

"Christ, don't you start…"

"He cares about you, Jo."

She shakes her head, smiling a little sadly. "Yeah. He cares about his girlfriend and her son as well."

"He was there for a week, Jo."

She won't look at him.

"A _week_, and then he had the dream of you resurrecting and started _looking for you_. What does that tell you, Jo?"

She gives him a look that is both miserable and hopeful. "I'm not going to risk everything on a chance, David," she says quietly.

He nods. "I know. But I think this is more than just a chance." He reaches over the table and takes her hand. "Look, you put so much into keeping me safe and making me happy…I want you to be happy too. And I know he's got a lot of stuff on his plate right now, but he's going to need all the help he can get to work through it."

She sighs, offering him a small smile. It's like an echo of all those smiles from before, when he first met her. "Alright. Alright, I'll talk to him."

He smiles back at her, squeezing her hand. "I don't think you'll be disappointed."

**-Blinding-**

"No, no," Dave murmurs against the shell of his ear. "You can't fall asleep yet."

"Why not?" Kurt murmurs back, sleepy and satiated and warm. His breath smokes in the sub-zero air. Overhead, the Aurora Australis dances and spins, twisting ribbons of exotic colour across the velvet of the Antarctic sky.

Dave smiles and presses a kiss to Kurt's bare shoulder, tightening his wings around them. This close to Heaven's Veils they are just barely visibly; every colour and yet none of them, and currently keeping the pair of them from freezing to death in the deep snow where they lie, skin still smoking from their lovemaking.

Kurt's probably one of the only people in the world who can brag that he lost his virginity buck-naked in a snowbank.

"Because I haven't told you a story yet," he says, and Kurt tips his head to look at him, eyes lit with the aurora and tiny fragments of Dave's grace that linger in him, flaring when they get close.

"What story?" Kurt asks, smiling because he already knows.

Dave smiles back.

"Once upon a time, there were five brothers, princes, who ruled a great kingdom in the stars. They were all great warriors, and loved their father and their huge family and their kingdom with all their hearts – would protect it from evil to their last breaths.

"One day there was great upheaval in the kingdom; there had been a war between two sides of the family. The prince's father had brought home a new creature – a creation of his that he called a human. It was beautiful, but its nature could be fickle, unpredictable, for it possessed true Free Will. Their father gave it to the princes to love – but the youngest hated it, and jealous of the attention the human and its descendants would receive, he started a great war in the star kingdom.

"As you know, he was defeated, and cast out. Many think that was the end of it…but it was not so.

"After the first war, the father was disillusioned – with his children, with his creations, with the state of the kingdom. He left, and to this day, no one knows where he is.

"When he left, everything changed."

Dave swallows. This next part is hard. He sighs when he feels Kurt turn in his arms, one pale hand resting against his cheek, thumb stroking his temple. Even now, balance returns.

"The princes fell into melancholy. They became too tired, too sad, too desperate to carry on. One of the middle brothers even left and hid amongst the now flourishing humans.

"The remaining three began to debate what to do without their father around; the younger one wanted to bring about the ultimate end and call forth Paradise from the ashes while the eldest wanted to search for their father and try to convince him to come home. The middle prince was torn, knowing his destiny was crucial to the ultimate end and would require him to kill his banished brother.

"The younger prince knew the only way the middle prince would agree to his plan is if it was the only option."

Kurt slid his other hand into Dave's. Gripped hard.

"So one night, he confronted his eldest brother, and taking him by surprise, cut out his heart and threw him and it down from the star kingdom, down and down and down…into the world of the humans. He became one, was reborn as one, and didn't remember who he was.

"Above, the star kingdom was in uproar; they had all felt the eldest prince fall, and clamoured at the younger for an explanation. But the younger prince was clever, and he answered their cries with a spell. It was a great net of forgetting that he cast over the whole kingdom, and all who fell beneath it believed that the eldest prince had cut his own heart out in a fit of grief and was no more.

"Even the middle prince was caught in the net, and so he went to his younger brother, and they began to plot the end of the world."

Dave is silent for a moment, lost in his celestial memories, until Kurt touches his face, pressing a soft kiss to his mouth.

"What about the eldest prince?" he whispers. "I like him. What happened to him in the human world?"

Dave's mouth curls up in a small, private smile. "He grew up, and got old, and died. But his shiny new human soul didn't go to heaven."

"Why?"

"Because when Death came to reap him, he took one look at the prince's soul and said, 'You're not done yet,' and sent him back into the world to be reborn. He began reincarnating down a very special bloodline belonging to a family that would have been his physical vessels if he had chosen to wander across the surface of the world. This happened time and time again, and each time Death said, 'no, still not done yet.' Until, one day in September of 1993…"

Kurt laughs, delighted, and Dave chuckles.

"On that day in September, Death stood over the prince and said, 'I think this might be the last time, you know. Good luck, David.'"

"Death said that to you? Really?"

"He's an interesting guy. Dean had pizza with him once."

Kurt laughs again, then quickly sobers. "But, wait, what about the prince's heart?"

Dave hums and kisses him leisurely. "You know what happened to that."

"I know – but how did it get where it ended up?"

Dave draws back, watching the aurora cast its light over Kurt's skin for moment, painting him in watercolour purples and greens and blues. After all of it, he still can't quite believe that he's got this lucky. One day he's going to have to thank Death for his last words.

"The heart fell too," he says softly. "It fell into the arms of a very special boy, one who had an exceptional capacity to love, and it bound itself to his soul. Each time that boy died, he waited, and Death came to him and said, 'not yet, but be patient,' and sent him back into the world to be born. Until one day, in December of 1993, Death stood over the heart's keeper and said, 'yes, this time.' But the boy asked, 'how will know him?' and Death replied –"

"'Because you will love him.'"

Dave blinks at him, a little surprised, but exceptionally pleased.

"That was clever," he whispers. "How did you guess that?"

Kurt smiles and nuzzles a kiss first to his throat and then to his mouth.

"I didn't guess."

**THE END**

(PS:

**-O Death-**

No one knows what passed between Death and David on that first day of summer, only that they met in a Thai take out place in downtown Lima, and when Dave left there was an old leather satchel over his shoulder.

Later that night, Sam Winchester woke up with a conscience and remembering nothing since April 2010.)

* * *

><p><strong>AN2:<strong> So. That happened. Fuck, I can't believe it's done. But, BUT, it's probably me shooting myself in the foot, because I've got SO MANY THINGS TO DO, but I don't feel like I'm done with this 'verse. So, I might – MIGHT – take a few requests if you have questions about the conclusions.

To conclude, love and kisses to everyone whose followed this fic and commented, your feedback has made my day every time.

XOXO


	9. PLAYLIST

**BEHOLD, THE PLAYLIST:  
><strong>

* * *

><p><strong>PART ONE<strong>

_Destiny_  
>Bear McCreary<p>

_Battlestar Sonatica_  
>Bear McCreary<p>

_Say After Me_  
>Bic Runga<p>

_In My Place_  
>Coldplay<p>

_First Snow_  
>Clint Mansell<p>

_Teardrop_  
>Massive Attack<p>

_Scarlet_  
>Brooke Fraser<p>

_In the House of Flies_  
>Deftones<p>

_The Way to Breathe_  
>Fur Patrol<p>

_White Rabbit_  
>Emiliana Torrini<p>

_Jaded_  
>Blindspott<p>

_Shake It Out_  
>Florence and the Machine<p>

* * *

><p><strong>PART TWO<strong>

_The Reasons_  
>POD<p>

_Mantra (Main Title)_  
>Bear McCreary<p>

_Never Let Me Go_  
>Florence and the Machine<p>

_Lovesong_  
>Adele<p>

* * *

><p><strong>PART THREE<strong>

_When the Levee Breaks_  
>A Perfect Circle<p>

_Elegy_  
>Bear McCreary<p>

_Push The Envelope_  
>The Asteroid's Galaxy Tour<p>

_Battlestar Sonatica (for two guitars)_  
>Bear McCreary &amp; Greg Nestor<p>

_Tomorrow Never Knows_  
>Allison Mosshart<p>

_When the Levee Breaks_  
>Led Zeppelin<p>

* * *

><p><strong>PART FOUR<strong>

_Inner City Blues_  
>The Asteroid's Galaxy Tour<p>

_Close Your Eyes_  
>Mark Nottham<p>

_Yours Truly_  
>Blindspott<p>

_Hells Bells_  
>ACDC

_Four Seasons in One Day_  
>Crowded House<p>

_Only If For A Night_  
>Florence and the Machine<p>

_Run_  
>Snow Patrol<p>

* * *

><p><strong>PART FIVE<strong>

_F.B.I_  
>Clint Mansell<p>

_Opening Titles_  
>Edward Shearmur<p>

_Sweet Dreams_  
>Emily Browning<p>

_Minerva_  
>Deftones<p>

* * *

><p><strong>PART SIX<strong>

_Seven Devils_  
>Florence and the Machine<p>

_Howl_  
>Florence and the Machine<p>

_To Victory_  
>Tyler Bates<p>

* * *

><p><strong>PART SEVEN<strong>

_Evil Angel_  
>Breaking Benjamin<p>

_Martial Law_  
>Bear McCreary<p>

_Ilah (Silent War)_  
>Blindspott<p>

_No Light, No Light_  
>Florence and the Machine<p>

_Death is the Road to Awe_  
>Clint Mansell<p>

_Returns a King_  
>Tyler Bates<p>

* * *

><p><strong>EPILOGUE<strong>

_Ruby Night_  
>Bic Runga<p>

_He Had a Good Time_  
>Cliff Martinez<p>

_Looking Back_  
>Kerry Muzzey<p>

_Home_  
>Anna Mac<p>

_One_  
>U2 (Glee Cast version)<p>

_All These Things That I've Done_  
>The Killers<p>

_Yo__ü__ and I_  
>Lady Gaga<p>

_Blinding_  
>Florence and the Machine<p>

_O Death_  
>Jen Titus<p> 


End file.
